“breathe in experience breathe out poetry”

— Muriel Rukeyser

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Muriel Rukeyser 42

poet and political activist 1913–1980

Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980) poet and political activist

Source: The Life of Poetry (1949), p. 221
Context: Experience taken into the body, breathed-in, so that reality is the completion of experience, and poetry is what is produced. And life is what is produced.
To stand against the idea of the fallen world, a powerful and destructive idea overshadowing Western poetry. In that sense, there is no lost Eden, and God is the future. The child walled-up in our life can be given his growth. In this growth is our security.

“Breathing my mother in,
Breathing my beloved in,
Breathing,
Breathing her nicotine,
Breathing,
Breathing the fall-out in,
Out in, out in, out in, out in.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Never for Ever (1980)

“Poetry and art are the breath of life to her.”

Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence

Source: The Age of Innocence

“poetry is the breath and finer spirit of knowledge”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

Source: Lyrical Ballads

“Their very names will breathe poetry forever.”

Vachel Lindsay (1879–1931) American poet

What It Means to Be a Poet in America (1926)
Context: There were three great Virginia poets in the very beginning — George Washington, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson. “What!” you say. “We do not even know the names of their publishers. They were not poets!”
Well, how do you know? Did you ever really read them? What do you know about it? Their very names will breathe poetry forever.