Muriel Rukeyser Quotes

The identified spirit, man and woman identified, moves toward further identifications. In a time of long war, surrounded by the images of war, we imagine peace. Among the resistances, we imagine poetry. And what city makes the welcome, in what soil do these roots flourish? For our concern is with sources. The sources of poetry are in the spirit seeking completeness. If we look for the definitions of peace, we will find, in history, that they are very few. The treaties never define the peace they bargain for: their premise is only the lack of war. The languages sometimes offer a choice of words: in the choice is illumination. In one long-standing language there are two meanings for peace. These two provide a present alternative. One meaning of peace is offered as "rest, security." This is comparable to our "security, adjustment, peace of mind." The other definition of peace is this: peace is completeness. It seems to me that this belief in peace as completeness belongs to the same universe as the hope for the individual as full-valued. In what condition does poetry live? In all conditions, sometimes with honor, sometimes underground. That history is in our poems.

In time of crisis, we summon up our strength. Then, if we are lucky, we are able to call every resource, every forgotten image that can leap to our quickening, every memory that can make us know our power. And this luck is more than it seems to be: it depends on the long preparation of the self to be used. In time of the crises of the spirit, we are aware of all our need, our need for each other and our need for our selves. We call up, with all the strength of summoning we have, our fullness.

And if an essential thing has flown between us,
rare intellectual bird of communication,
let us seize it quickly : let our preference
choose it instead of softer things to screen us
each from the other's self : muteness or hesitation,
nor petrify live miracle by our indifference.

Poetry is not; or seems not to be. But it appears that among the great conflicts of this culture, the conflict in our attitude toward poetry stands clearly lit. There are no guards built up to hide it. We call see its expression, and we can see its effects upon us. We can see our own conflict and our own resource if we look, now, at this art, which has been made of all the arts the one least acceptable. Anyone dealing with poetry and the love of poetry must deal, then, with the hatred of poetry, and perhaps even Ignore with the indifference which is driven toward the center. It comes through as boredom, as name-calling, as the traditional attitude of the last hundred years which has chalked in the portrait of the poet as he is known to this society, which, as Herbert Read says, "does not challenge poetry in principle it merely treats it with ignorance, indifference and unconscious cruelty." Poetry is foreign to us, we do not let it enter our daily lives.

The scene of hope's ahead; look, April,
and next month with a softer wind,
maybe they'll rest upon their land,
and then maybe the happy song, and love,
a tall boy who was never in a tunnel.

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.

There is also, in any history, the buried, the wasted, and the lost.

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

it was suggested to me in my adolescence, it would be a good idea if I married a doctor, and when he was out on housecalls I could write my poems. Now of course we have no housecalls and we have women poets-the culture has changed to that extent.

The movement of meaning is surely the music of poetry. There isn't any music as we mean music, but there is that movement in the body and the soul, if you like. And one longs for it; it is a deep pleasure and a deep life to us, and there is this union of a physical life and a mental life that comes to us in poetry, and the physical life is bound up with sound in that way. The movement of our breathing is why we take pleasure in hearing poets read, even though most poets are abominable readers, as you know.

Wherever
we walk
we will make

Wherever
we protest
we will go planting

Make poems
seed grass
feed a child growing
build a house
Whatever we stand against
We will stand feeding and seeding

Wherever
I walk
I will make

"Three Sides of a Coin"

Am I in your light?
No, go on reading
(the hackneyed light of evening quarrelling with the bulbs;
the book’s bent rectangle solid on your knees)
only my fingers in your hair, only, my eyes
splitting the skull to tickle your brain with love
in a slow caress blurring the mind,
kissing your mouth awake
opening the body’s mouth stopping the words.
This light is thick with birds, and
evening warns us beautifully of death.
Slowly I bend over you, slowly your breath
runs rhythms through my blood
as if I said
I love you
and you should raise your head.
listening, speaking into the covert night
: Did someone say something?
Love, am I in your light?
Am I?

See how love alters the living face
go spin the immortal coin through time
watch the thing flip through space
tick tick

Muriel Rukeyser, Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser. (University of Pittsburgh Press May 10th 2014)

The universe is made up of stories, not atoms.

We are against war and the sources of war. We are for poetry and the sources of poetry. They are everyday, these sources, as the sources of peace are everyday, infinite and commonplace as a look, as each new sun.

O for God's sake they are connected underneath.