Poets of the USA: New York: Muriel Rukeyser
My New York Poet.
(and how in hell do you choose one? They have a poet breeding program in that state, I think!)
This is one of my favorite people. Period.
And yes, I have mentioned her before.
Muriel Rukeyser is my poet, on this round (I am thinking of doing a poets from A to Z series next...), from New York.
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/100
"Muriel Rukeyser's poetry is unequalled in the twentieth-century United States in its range of reference, its generosity of vision, and its energy," writes Adrienne Rich. "She pushes us, readers, writers, and participants in the life of our time, to enlarge our sense of what poetry is about in the world, and of the place of feelings and memory in politics."
The Poem as Mask
by Muriel Rukeyser
Orpheus
When I wrote of the women in their dances and
wildness, it was a mask,
on their mountain, gold-hunting, singing, in orgy,
it was a mask; when I wrote of the god,
fragmented, exiled from himself, his life, the love gone
down with song,
it was myself, split open, unable to speak, in exile from
myself.
There is no mountain, there is no god, there is memory
of my torn life, myself split open in sleep, the rescued
child
beside me among the doctors, and a word
of rescue from the great eyes.
No more masks! No more mythologies!
Now, for the first time, the god lifts his hand,
the fragments join in me with their own music.
Now we turn to memory, we search all the days we had forgotten for a tradition that can support our arms in such a moment. If we are free people, we are also in a sense free to choose our past, at every moment to choose the tradition we will bring to the future. We invoke a rigorous positive, that will enable us to imagine our choices, and to make them.
Is it possible that the "chaos" of our time and the "obscurity" that labels our poetry have a common base-that there are clusters of events and emotions which require new ways of making them more human, and that modern art and modern science have a clue to provide?
Is there a common denominator here? What possible "exercise" can the emotions find, what possible freeing of emotion is there, that can train us to face the immediate future?
source:http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/22604
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/muriel-rukeyser
Here is a new site dedicated to Muriel Rukeyser:
http://murielrukeyser.emuenglish.org/
She is getting her own conference:
http://murielrukeyser.emuenglish.org/welcome/rukeyser-con-2013/
The Modern American poetry site, with lots of links and information:
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/rukeyser/rukeyser.htm
(and how in hell do you choose one? They have a poet breeding program in that state, I think!)
This is one of my favorite people. Period.
And yes, I have mentioned her before.
Muriel Rukeyser is my poet, on this round (I am thinking of doing a poets from A to Z series next...), from New York.
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/100
"Muriel Rukeyser's poetry is unequalled in the twentieth-century United States in its range of reference, its generosity of vision, and its energy," writes Adrienne Rich. "She pushes us, readers, writers, and participants in the life of our time, to enlarge our sense of what poetry is about in the world, and of the place of feelings and memory in politics."
The Poem as Mask
by Muriel Rukeyser
Orpheus
When I wrote of the women in their dances and
wildness, it was a mask,
on their mountain, gold-hunting, singing, in orgy,
it was a mask; when I wrote of the god,
fragmented, exiled from himself, his life, the love gone
down with song,
it was myself, split open, unable to speak, in exile from
myself.
There is no mountain, there is no god, there is memory
of my torn life, myself split open in sleep, the rescued
child
beside me among the doctors, and a word
of rescue from the great eyes.
No more masks! No more mythologies!
Now, for the first time, the god lifts his hand,
the fragments join in me with their own music.
Now we turn to memory, we search all the days we had forgotten for a tradition that can support our arms in such a moment. If we are free people, we are also in a sense free to choose our past, at every moment to choose the tradition we will bring to the future. We invoke a rigorous positive, that will enable us to imagine our choices, and to make them.
Is it possible that the "chaos" of our time and the "obscurity" that labels our poetry have a common base-that there are clusters of events and emotions which require new ways of making them more human, and that modern art and modern science have a clue to provide?
Is there a common denominator here? What possible "exercise" can the emotions find, what possible freeing of emotion is there, that can train us to face the immediate future?
source:http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/22604
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/muriel-rukeyser
Here is a new site dedicated to Muriel Rukeyser:
http://murielrukeyser.emuenglish.org/
She is getting her own conference:
http://murielrukeyser.emuenglish.org/welcome/rukeyser-con-2013/
The Modern American poetry site, with lots of links and information:
http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/rukeyser/rukeyser.htm