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Muriel Rukeyser on Poetry

1913–1980 United States

← All quotes by Muriel Rukeyser

11 quotes

The meanings of poetry take their growth through the interaction of the images and the music of the poem.

The Life of Poetry (1949)

There are ways in which poetry reaches the people who, for one reason or another, are walled off from it.

The Life of Poetry (1949)

Poetry is, above all, an approach to the truth of feeling, and what is the use of truth!

The Life of Poetry (1949)

Experience taken into the body, breathed-in, so that reality is the completion of experience, and poetry is what is produced. And life is what is produced.

The Life of Poetry (1949)

The sources of poetry are in the spirit seeking completeness.

There is one kind of knowledge-infinitely precious, time-resistant more than monuments, here to be passed between the generations in any way it may be: never to be used. And that is poetry.

The Life of Poetry (1949)

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)

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

The Life of Poetry (1949)

Poetry is not; or seems not to be.

The Life of Poetry (1949)

Breathe-in experience, breathe-out poetry

The Life of Poetry (1949)

The universe of poetry is the universe of emotional truth. Our material is the way we feel and the way we remember. (p 23)

The Life of Poetry (1949)

Attribution

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