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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

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Muriel Rukeyser
Age: 66 †
Born: 1913
Born: December 15
Died: 1980
Died: February 12
Author
Poet
Screenwriter
Writer
New York City
New York
Wants
Make
Stop
Impossible
Word
Reading
Read
Closing
Poem
Keep
Poetry
Book

More quotes by Muriel Rukeyser

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There is also, in any history, the buried, the wasted, and the lost.
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The heavy sensual shoulders, the thighs, the blood-born flesh and earth turning into color, rocks into their crystals, water to sound, fire to form: life flickers uncounted into the supple arms of love.
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Let us not fear the hidden. Or each other.
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A world is to be fought for, sung, and built: Love must imagine the world.
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Women in drudgery knew They must be one of four: Whores, artists, saints, and wives. There are composite lives that women always live
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the truth of a poem is its form and its content, its music and its meaning are the same.
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Always our wars have been our confessions of weakness
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I am working out the vocabulary of my silence.
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Flight is intolerable contradiction.
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If there were no poetry on any day in the world, poetry would be invented that day. For there would be an intolerable hunger.
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Beware of those who talk about sacrifice.
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I hear the singing of the lives of women. They clear mystery, the offering, and pride.
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The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.
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The journey is my home.
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What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open.
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The process of writing a poem represents work done on the self of the poet, in order to make form.
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My lifetime listens to yours.
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What three things can never be done? / Forget. Keep silent. Stand alone
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The world is not made of molecules, the world is made of stories.
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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.
Muriel Rukeyser