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Quotes from The Life of Poetry — Muriel Rukeyser

1913–1980 United States

← All quotes by Muriel Rukeyser

32 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)

Moment to moment, we can grow, if we can bring ourselves to meet the moment with our lives.

The Life of Poetry (1949)

The poetic image is not a static thing. It lives in time, as does the poem.

The Life of Poetry (1949)

The cutting of films is a parable in the motion of any art that lives in time, as well as a parable in the ethics of communication.

The Life of Poetry (1949)

Belief has its structures, and its symbols change. Its tradition changes. All the relationships within these forms are inter-dependent.

The Life of Poetry (1949)

However confused the scene of our life appears, however torn we may be who now do face that scene, it can be faced, and we can go on to be whole.

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)

The great ideas are always emerging, to be available to all men and women. And one hope of our lives is the communication of these truths.

The Life of Poetry (1949)

A poem is an imaginary work, living in time, indicated in language. It is and it expresses; it allows us to express.

The Life of Poetry (1949)

To be against war is not enough, it is hardly a beginning.

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)

Always our wars have been our confessions of weakness.

The Life of Poetry (1949)

In time of the crises of the spirit, we are aware of all of need, our need for each other and our need for ourselves. We call up our fullness; we turn, and act.

The Life of Poetry (1949)

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)

Many of our poems are such monuments. They offer the truths of outrage and the truths of possibility.

The Life of Poetry (1949)

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)

A poem does invite, it does require.

The Life of Poetry (1949)

Attribution

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