Quotes by Muriel Rukeyser

About Muriel Rukeyser:

Muriel Rukeyser 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".
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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. There is no such thing as bad art.

Muriel Rukeyser

Always our wars have been our confessions of weakness

Muriel Rukeyser

We are against war and the sources of war. We are for poetry and the sources of poetry.

Muriel Rukeyser

American poetry has been part of a culture in conflict....We are a people tending toward democracy at the level of hope; at another level, the economy of the nation, the empire of business within the republic, both include in their basic premise the ...

Muriel Rukeyser

We hear the saints saying: Our brother the world. We hear the revolutionaries: Dare we win?

Muriel Rukeyser

I think there is choice possible to us at any moment, as long as we live. But there is no sacrifice. There is a choice, and the rest falls away. Second choice does not exist. Beware of those who talk about sacrifice.

Muriel Rukeyser

In our period, they say there is free speech. They say there is no penalty for poets, There is no penalty for writing poems. They say this. This is the penalty.

Muriel Rukeyser

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.

Muriel Rukeyser

Our poems will have failed if our readers are not brought by them beyond the poems.

Muriel Rukeyser

What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open.

Muriel Rukeyser

is the type of the imagination at work in the world. His story is that of an opening up which has had its effect on our lives and our thinking; and, it seems to me, it is the emblem of the naked imagination —which is called abstract and impractical...

Muriel Rukeyser

The universe is made up of stories, not atoms.

Muriel Rukeyser

As we live our truths, we will communicate across all barriers, speaking for the sources of peace. Peace that is not lack of war, but fierce and positive.

Muriel Rukeyser

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.

Muriel Rukeyser

breathe in experience breathe out poetry

Muriel Rukeyser

The fear of poetry is an indication that we are cut off from our own reality.

Muriel Rukeyser

...only one man lived who could understand 's papers. That was , and now he is dead.

Muriel Rukeyser

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

Muriel Rukeyser

The journey is my home.

Muriel Rukeyser

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.

Muriel Rukeyser

Author Bio

  • NameMuriel Rukeyser
  • Descriptionpoet and political activist
  • BornDecember 15, 1913
  • DiedFebruary 12, 1980
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionPoet; Author
  • AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship