Muriel Rukeyser Quotes

1913–1980 United States

Muriel Rukeyser (15 December 1913 – 12 February 1980) was an American poet and political activist, most famous for her poems about equality, feminism, social justice, and Judaism.

United States
20th-century poets
Activists
Authors
Poets

Also known as: Rukeyser, Muriel

Random Muriel Rukeyser quote

51 quotes

If there is a feeling that something has been lost, it may be because much has not yet been used, much is still to be found and begun.

The Life of Poetry (1949)

A society in motion, with many overlapping groups, in their dance. And above all, a society in which peace is not lack of war, but a drive toward unity.

The Life of Poetry (1949)

The degree of appropriateness of expression depends on the preparing. By preparing I mean allowing the reader to feel the interdependences, the relations, within the poem.

The Life of Poetry (1949)

These are roads to take when you think of your country
and interested bring down the maps again,
phoning the statistician, asking the dear friend,
reading the papers with morning inquiry.

U.S. 1 (1938)

We would try by any means
To reach the limits of ourselves, to reach beyond ourselves,
To let go the means, to wake.

The Speed of Darkness (1968)

A poem does invite, it does require.

The Life of Poetry (1949)

O for God's sake
they are connected
underneath.

The Gates (1976)

"I speak to you. You speak to me. Is that fragile?"

Local images have one kind of reality. U.S. 1 will, I hope, have that kind and another too. Poetry can extend the document.

U.S. 1 (1938)

The whole and fertile spirit as guarantee
For every human freedom, suffering to be free,
Daring to live for the impossible.

We sit here, very different each from the other, until the passion arrives to give us our equality, to make us part of the play, to make the play part of us.

The Life of Poetry (1949)

There are the questions of love and religion that have to enter, along with the social bonds between us, into everything we do.

The Education of a Poet (1976)

Poetry is foreign to us, we do not let it enter our daily lives.

The Life of Poetry (1949)

What do you want — a cliff over a city?
A foreland, sloped to sea and overgrown with roses?
These people live here.

U.S. 1 (1938)

I lived in the first century of world wars.
Most mornings I would be more or less insane.

The Speed of Darkness (1968)

The continuity of film, in which the writer deals with a track of images moving at a given rate of speed, and a separate sound-track which is joined arbitrarily to the image-track, is closer to the continuity of poetry than anything else in art.

The Life of Poetry (1949)

In rewriting, I have tried always to strengthen the sound structure and to make a dense fabric, of sound, of fact, of reality and truth.

Interview (1978)

The world of this creation, and its poetry, is not yet born. The possibility before us is that now we enter upon another time, again to choose. Its birth is tragic, but the process is ahead: we must be able to turn a time of war into a time of building.

The Life of Poetry (1949)

The use of truth is its communication. (p 27)

The Life of Poetry (1949)

Poetry is not; or seems not to be.

The Life of Poetry (1949)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Muriel Rukeyser (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.