Muriel Rukeyser

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

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

“The actual world, not some fantastic structure that has nothing to do with reality, must provide the material for modern poetry.”

“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.”

“The universe is made up of stories, not atoms.”

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

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

“Editors have grown timid... a brave advance is almost inevitably followed by quick back-tracking, generally by dilution and debasement of the original intention.”

“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.”

“Exchange is creation.”

“The journey is my home.”

“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.”

“Always our wars have been our confessions of weakness”

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

“It is the single image, as used in a photograph or a painting - or the frame of a film - to which words have been added to enlarge the context. The method is not the same as that by which most paintings are named. It is closer in its performance to what dialogue does to a movie, to what the caption does to a good poster.”

“If there were no poetry on any day in the world, poetry would be invented that day. For there would be an intolerable hunger.”

“One characteristic of modern poetry is that arrangement of parts which strikes many people as being violent or obscure.”

“The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.”

“I hope for quick, fluent copy and memorable pictures. The words would not 'describe' the pictures; the pictures would not 'illustrate' the words. Together, they would carry a stamp and tell a story.”

“The advertising men made it clear that there were two ways of looking at ideas in a war against fascism. Those of us who were working on the project believed ideas were to be fought for; the advertising men believed they were to be sold. The audience, those at home in wartime, were not 'citizens' or 'people.' They were 'customers.'”