Muriel Rukeyser
Muriel Rukeyser
Muriel Rukeyserwas 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"...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth15 December 1913
CountryUnited States of America
book reading want
No one wants to read poetry. You have to make it impossible for them to put the poem down--impossible for them to stop reading it, word after word. You have to keep them from closing the book.
peace war women
Always our wars have been our confessions of weakness
poetry spirit source
The sources of poetry are in the spirit seeking completeness.
pride offering singing
I hear the singing of the lives of women. They clear mystery, the offering, and pride.
poetry would-be world
If there were no poetry on any day in the world, poetry would be invented that day. For there would be an intolerable hunger.
stories world atoms
The world is made up of Stories, not Atoms.
cutting reality poetry-is
The fear of poetry is an indication that we are cut off from our own reality.
art giving able
A work of art is one through which the consciousness of the artist is able to give its emotions to anyone who is prepared to receive them.
home journey
The journey is my home.
long together looks
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.
peace science technology
The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.
tolerance taught despise
Never to despise in myself what I have been taught to despise. Nor to despise the other. Not to despise the it. To make this relation with the it: to know that I am it.
emotional poetry way
The universe of poetry is the universe of emotional truth. Our material is in the way we feel and the way we remember.
stupid illumination people
How can I look back and not speak of the stupid learning about birth? Of the stupid learning that people make love, and how it seemed the reason for all things, the intimacy of my wondering, the illumination that to an adolescent was the cause for life around me, the reason why the unhappy people I knew did not kill themselves?