Muriel Rukeyser Quotes

The universe is made of stories, not atoms.

"I speak to you. You speak to me. Is that fragile?"

These are roads to take when you think of your country reading the papers with morning inquiry.

Here is your road, tying cutting fast and direct into the town.

What do you want — a cliff over a city? These people live here.

This is to be a summary poem of the life of the Atlantic coast of this country, nourished by the communications which run down it. Gauley Bridge is inland, but it was created by theories, systems, and workmen from many coastal sections — factors which are, in the end, not regional or national. Local images have one kind of reality. U.S. 1 will, I hope, have that kind and another too. Poetry can extend the document.

To be a Jew in the twentieth century The gift is torment.

The whole and fertile spirit as guarantee Daring to live for the impossible.

A poem does invite, it does require. What does it invite? A poem invites you to feel. More than that: it invites you to respond. And better than that: a poem invites a total response. This response is total, but it is reached through the emotions. 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.