#Muriel Rukeyser

[existential-celestial]

new year fragments // T.S. Eliot / Ella Wheeler Wilcox / Joseph Fasano / T.S. Eliot / Muriel Rukeyser / Kim Addonizio / j. p. berame

[trashmuth]

Muriel Rukeyser, Then  x  The Bear

[thoughtkick]

Breathe in experience, breathe out poetry.

Muriel Rukeyser

[strokeofserenity]

Muriel Rukeyser, The Collected Poems; "Christmas Eve"

[perfectquote]

Breathe in experience, breathe out poetry.

Muriel Rukeyser

[firstfullmoon]

Muriel Rukeyser, “Waking This Morning”

[stay-close]

Breathe in experience, breathe out poetry.

Muriel Rukeyser

[mournfulroses]

Muriel Rukeyser, from Gods & Mortals: Modern Poems on Classics; "The Poem as a Mask,"

[defconprime]

USS Rukeyser

[perfectfeelings]

Breathe in experience, breathe out poetry.

Muriel Rukeyser

[quotefeeling]

Breathe in experience, breathe out poetry.

Muriel Rukeyser

[nightlyquotes]

Breathe in experience, breathe out poetry.

Muriel Rukeyser

[resqectable]

Breathe in experience, breathe out poetry.

Muriel Rukeyser

[thoughtkick]

Breathe in experience, breathe out poetry.

Muriel Rukeyser

[thelonguepuree]

Long Past Moncada

Nothing was less than it seemed, my darling: the danger was greater, the love was greater, the suffering grows daily great— and the fear we saw gathering in that mimosa valley is tall in the countries, a garden of growing death; your death, my darling, the threat to our lifetime and to all we love. Whether you fell in the mountains during the lack of guns, or later, on the pavements of the falling city, you find my days; among the heckling of clocks, the incessant failures, I know how you recognized our war, and ran to it as a runner to his eager wedding or our immediate love. If I indeed killed you, my darling, if my cable killed arriving the afternoon the city fell, no further guilt could more irrevocably drive my days through the disordered battles and the cities down in a clash of metal on murder, a stampede of hunger and death. Other loves, other children, other "gifts," as you said, "of the revolution," arrive, but there has been the hand on the door, life entered my hours, whether you lie fallen among those sunlight fields, or by miracle somewhere stand, your word of war and love, death and another promise survive as a lifetime sound. Muriel Rukeyser, from Beast in View (1944)

[insilverrolled]

Effort at Speech Between Two People

By Muriel Rukeyser [x]

:  Speak to me.          Take my hand.            What are you now?   I will tell you all.          I will conceal nothing. When I was three, a little child read a story about a rabbit who died, in the story, and I crawled under a chair    : a pink rabbit    :    it was my birthday, and a candle burnt a sore spot on my finger, and I was told to be happy.

:  Oh, grow to know me.        I am not happy.        I will be open: Now I am thinking of white sails against a sky like music, like glad horns blowing, and birds tilting, and an arm about me. There was one I loved, who wanted to live, sailing.

:  Speak to me.        Take my hand.        What are you now? When I was nine, I was fruitily sentimental, fluid    :    and my widowed aunt played Chopin, and I bent my head on the painted woodwork, and wept. I want now to be close to you.        I would link the minutes of my days close, somehow, to your days.

:  I am not happy.          I will be open. I have liked lamps in evening corners, and quiet poems. There has been fear in my life.          Sometimes I speculate On what a tragedy his life was, really.

:  Take my hand.          Fist my mind in your hand.          What are you now? When I was fourteen, I had dreams of suicide, and I stood at a steep window, at sunset, hoping toward death   : if the light had not melted clouds and plains to beauty, if light had not transformed that day, I would have leapt. I am unhappy.          I am lonely.          Speak to me.

:  I will be open.          I think he never loved me: He loved the bright beaches, the little lips of foam that ride small waves, he loved the veer of gulls: he said with a gay mouth: I love you.          Grow to know me.

:  What are you now?          If we could touch one another, if these our separate entities could come to grips, clenched like a Chinese puzzle . . . yesterday I stood in a crowded street that was live with people, and no one spoke a word, and the morning shone. Everyone silent, moving. . . . Take my hand.          Speak to me.