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Muriel Rukeyser Biography

Muriel Rukeyser

Muriel Rukeyser (December 15, 1913 – February 12, 1980) was an American poet and political activist, best known for her poems about equality, feminism, social justice, and Judaism. Kenneth Rexroth said that she was the greatest poet of her "exact generation."

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Muriel Rukeyser Quotes

There has been in our time a lack of reliance on language and a lack of experimentation which are frightening to anyone who sees them as symptoms. We know the phenomenon of stage-fright: it holds the player shivering, incapable of speech or action. Perhaps there is an audience-fright which the play can feel, which leaves him with these incapacities.

Action, Frightening, Leaves, Player, Speech, Time

A world is to be fought for, sung, and built: Love must imagine the world.

Built, Imagine, Sung, World

All the poems of our lives are not yet made.

Made, Our Lives, Poems, Lives

The 'idea' for the poem, which may come as an image thrown against memory, as a sound of words that sets off a traveling of sound and meaning, as a curve of emotion (a form) plotted by certain crises of events or image or sound, or as a title which evokes a sense of inner relations; this is the first 'surfacing' of the poem. Then a period of stillness may follow.

Memories, Curves, Ideas, Idea, Curve, Title

I am haunted by interrupted acts, introspective as a leper, enchanted by a repulsive clew, a gross and fugitive movement of the limbs. Is this the love that shook the lights to flame?

Acts, Flames, Introspective, Light, Movement

One writes in order to feel.

Feels, Order, Writes, Writing

I will try to be non-violent one more day this morning, waking the world away in the violent day.

Morning, Trying, Waking, World

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

Fragile, Speak

Try to live as if there were a God

God, Life, Live, Trying

The world is not made of molecules, the world is made of stories.

Molecules, Stories, World

If we look long enough and hard enough. . . we will begin to see the connections that bind us together, and when we recognize those connections, we will begin to change the world.

Long, Together, Connections, See, World

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.

Confused, Goes On, May, Appears, Scene, Torn

Exchange is creation.

Creation, Exchange

The statement of ideas in a poem may have to do with logic. More profoundly, it may be identified with the emotional progression of the poem, in terms of the music and images, so that the poem is alive throughout. Another, more fundamental statement in poetry, is made through the images themselves those declarations, evocative, exact, and musical, which move through time and are the actions of a poem.

Emotional, Ideas, Moving, Musical, Statement, Time

Nourish beginnings, let us nourish beginnings. Not all things are blest, but the seeds of all things are blest. The blessing is in the seed.

All Things, Blessing, New Beginnings, Nourish, Seed

The universe of poetry is the universe of emotional truth. Our material is in the way we feel and the way we remember.

Emotional, Poetry, Way, Truth, Universe

Hollywood works continually to keep its standard of contempt for the audience.

Contempt, Continually, Hollywood, Standard, Standards, Works

I hear the singing of the lives of women. They clear mystery, the offering, and pride.

Pride, Offering, Singing, Mystery, Women

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

Century, Insane, Morning, War, Wars

Women in drudgery knew They must be one of four: Whores, artists, saints, and wives. There are composite lives that women always live

Artist, Artists, Drudgery, Four, Saint, Wife

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