“A poem does invite, it does require.”

—  Muriel Rukeyser

Source: The Life of Poetry (1949), Chapter One : The Fear of Poetry, p. 8
Context: A poem does invite, it does require. What does it invite? A poem invites you to feel. More than that: it invites you to respond. And better than that: a poem invites a total response.
This response is total, but it is reached through the emotions. A fine poem will seize your imagination intellectually — that is, when you reach it, you will reach it intellectually too — but the way is through emotion, through what we call feeling.

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Muriel Rukeyser photo
Muriel Rukeyser 42
poet and political activist 1913–1980

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