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.
poet and political activist (1913–1980)
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.
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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. To stand against the idea of the fallen world, a powerful and destructive idea overshadowing Western poetry. In that sense, there is no lost Eden, and God is the future. The child walled-up in our life can be given his growth. In this growth is our security.
I don't believe that poetry can save the world. I do believe that the forces in our wish to share something of our experience by turning it into something and giving it to somebody: that is poetry. That is some kind of saving thing, and as far as my life is concerned, poetry has saved me again and again.
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.