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

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
Singing
Pride
Mystery
Hear
Clear
Lives
Women
Offering

More quotes by Muriel Rukeyser

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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?
Muriel Rukeyser
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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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The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.
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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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Always our wars have been our confessions of weakness
Muriel Rukeyser
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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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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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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.
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Not all things are blest, but the seeds of all things are blest.
Muriel Rukeyser
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Reality is the completion of experience.
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The world is not made of molecules, the world is made of stories.
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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.
Muriel Rukeyser
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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.
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The fear of poetry is an indication that we are cut off from our own reality.
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I remember mother saying : Inventors are like poets, a trashy lot
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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.
Muriel Rukeyser
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Beware of those who talk about sacrifice.
Muriel Rukeyser
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Poetry is, above all, an approach to the truth of feeling. A fine poem will seize your imagination intellectually - that is, when you reach it, you will reach it intellectually too - but the way is through emotion, through what we call feeling.
Muriel Rukeyser
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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