The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.
Muriel RukeyserRead
Local images have one kind of reality. 'U.S. 1' will, I hope, have that kind and another, too. Poetry can extend the document.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Poetry provides a deeper, multifaceted perception of reality beyond mere documentation.
In this quote, Muriel Rukeyser suggests that local images and experiences offer one aspect of reality. However, she believes that poetry has the power to expand and enrich this understanding, creating a layered reality that combines the literal and the imaginative, thus extending the meanings and implications of everyday experiences.
Themes
PoetryRealityArtImaginationExpression
In practice
Example use cases
In a poetry reading, one might use this quote to discuss the transformative power of words.
More from Muriel Rukeyser
All quotes βA 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 RukeyserRead
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.
Muriel RukeyserRead
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 RukeyserRead
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.
Muriel RukeyserRead
Always our wars have been our confessions of weakness
Muriel RukeyserRead
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The value of art is in the observer.
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If you already have a piece of music ingrained in your body, why would you not play it?
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To be a great painter means to be a great poet: someone who transcends the limits of his language.
Octavio PazRead
She's got those big black eyes with plenty shiny white in them that makes them shine like brand new money and she knows what God gave women eyelashes for, too. Her hair is not what you might call straight. It's negro hair, but it's got a kind of white flavor. Like the piece of string out of a ham. It's not ham at all, but it's been around ham and got the flavor.
Zora Neale HurstonRead
Poetry is either something that lives like fire inside you -- like music to the musician or Marxism to the Communist -- or else it is nothing, an empty, formalized bore around which pedants can endlessly drone their notes and explanations.
F. Scott FitzgeraldRead