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" 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. "

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" 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

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" Breathe-in experience, breathe-out poetry. "

Muriel Rukeyser

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" 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. "

" I should like to use another word: 'audience' or 'reader' or 'listener' seems inadequate. I suggest the old word 'witness,' which includes the act of seeing and knowing by personal experience, as well as the act of giving evidence. "

" The town of Gauley Bridge stands as a pattern for all those places where people are linked even in the middle of their suffering, where people fight against an evil condition so that other people need not go through the same fight. "

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

" Exchange is creation. "

Muriel Rukeyser

Exchange

Creation

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

" 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

Face

Now

" 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.' "

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

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

" Local images have one kind of reality. 'U.S. 1' will, I hope, have that kind and another, too. Poetry can extend the document. "

" 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. "

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

" I learned that I had been brought up as a protected, blindfolded daughter. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" The journey is my home. "

Muriel Rukeyser

Home

Journey

" Those who speak of our culture as dead or dying have a quarrel with life, and I think they cannot understand its terms, but must endlessly repeat the projection of their own desires. "

" The sources of poetry are in the spirit seeking completeness. "