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a ruykeyser poem…

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  • December 15, 2020 at 10:53 am #104694
    Mary Ann Caws (she/her)
    Participant

    a muriel ruykeyser poem….

    Mary Ann Caws

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    Poem of the Day: Poem (I lived in the first century of world wars)
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    [News from The Poetry Foundation]

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    BY MURIEL RUKEYSER

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    I lived in the first century of world wars.
    Most mornings I would be more or less insane,
    The newspapers would arrive with their careless stories,
    The news would pour out of various devices
    Interrupted by attempts to sell products to the unseen.
    I would call my friends on other devices;
    They would be more or less mad for similar reasons.
    Slowly I would get to pen and paper,
    Make my poems for others unseen and unborn.
    In the day I would be reminded of those men and women,
    Brave, setting up signals across vast distances,
    Considering a nameless way of living, of almost unimagined values.
    As the lights darkened, as the lights of night brightened,
    We would try to imagine them, try to find each other,
    To construct peace, to make love, to reconcile
    Waking with sleeping, ourselves with each other,
    Ourselves with ourselves. We would try by any means
    To reach the limits of ourselves, to reach beyond ourselves,
    To let go the means, to wake.

    I lived in the first century of these wars.?

    December 15, 2020 at 2:49 pm #104736
    Maureen E. Ruprecht Fadem (she/her)
    Participant

    i think that is my favorite rukeyser poem, mary ann.

    the best thing i ever read: The Life of Poetry.

    ~mf.

    December 15, 2020 at 3:23 pm #104737
    Joshua Wilner
    Participant

    The Ruykeyser poem is extraordinary, Mary Ann. Thanks for sharing it – I hadn’t known it previously.

    Not quite so resonant, but with lines I find myself recalling (“Great Nature has another thing to do/To you and me…/This shaking keeps me steady”) is Roethke’s “The Waking”:

    I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
    I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
    I learn by going where I have to go.

    We think by feeling. What is there to know?
    I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
    I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

    Of those so close beside me, which are you?
    God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
    And learn by going where I have to go.

    Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
    The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
    I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

    Great Nature has another thing to do
    To you and me; so take the lively air,
    And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

    This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
    What falls away is always. And is near.
    I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
    I learn by going where I have to go.

    I look forward to joining the Surrealism group to come.

    December 15, 2020 at 4:16 pm #104739
    Maureen E. Ruprecht Fadem (she/her)
    Participant

    i don’t know the roethke but i think these lines are deeply resonant with Rukeyser’s spirit:

    We think by feeling. What is there to know?
    I hear my being dance from ear to ear.

    “i hear my being dance” — as if heard like music is heard, external to oneself, like Krapp hears himself “from ear to ear” — somehow this resonates for me with a line from The Life of Poetry that haunts me. Rukeyser was referring to poetry here, to what we want from it:

    “We wish to be told, in the most memorable way, what we have been meaning all along” (26).

    we wish to be told, with drama and force, who we always-already knew ourselves to be, again.

    ~mf.

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