“breathe in experience breathe out poetry”
Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980) poet and political activist
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.
“breathe in experience breathe out poetry”
Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980) poet and political activist
“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
“I wake to "magnolias sweet and fresh",
Lines of poetry on my breath”
"Firefly" on Greta Gaines (1999); the phrase in quotes is one earlier found in "Strange Fruit" (1937) by Abel Meeropol, famously sung by Billie Holiday.
Context: I wake to "magnolias sweet and fresh",
Lines of poetry on my breath,
You were here but you have stolen away.
My inspiration is an evening star,
So come to me wherever you are,
I will wait for you tonight alone in the dark…
Robert Pinsky (1940) American poet, editor, literary critic, academic.
The Art of Poetry - interview 1995 with Downing & Kunitz
W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright
His Dream http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1509/ <br class="br">The Green Helmet and Other Poems (1910) <br class="br">Context: I swayed upon the gaudy stern<br>The butt-end of a steering-oar,<br>And saw wherever I could turn<br>A crowd upon a shore.<br>And though I would have hushed the crowd,<br>There was no mother's son but said,<br>'What is the figure in a shroud<br>Upon a gaudy bed?'<br>And after running at the brim<br>Cried out upon that thing beneath<br>--It had such dignity of a limb--<br>By the sweet name of Death.<br>Though I'd my finger on my lip,<br>What could I but take up the song?<br>And running crowd and gaudy ship<br>Cried out the whole night long,<br>Crying amid the glittering sea,<br>Naming it with the ecstatic breath,<br>Because it had such dignity,<br>By the sweet name of Death.
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.