'The fear of poetry'

 

“Breathe-in experience, breathe-out poetry.” – Muriel Rukeyser

 

Born on this date in 1915 Rukeyser started writing poetry while still in high school but didn’t write it seriously until 1935.  That year her first book, Theory of Flight was published by the “Yale Younger Poets Series,” selected personally by poet laureate Stephen Vincent Benét, who wrote the book’s introduction.   In her lifetime (she died in 1980) Rukeyser wrote 25 books, 18 of them poetry.  For Saturday’s Poem, here is Rukeyser’s,

                       Reading Time: 1 Minute 26 Seconds

                           The fear of poetry is the
                           fear: mystery and fury of a midnight street
                           of windows whose low voluptuous voice
                           issues, and after that there is not peace.

                           The round waiting moment in the
                           theatre: curtain rises, dies into the ceiling
                           and here is played the scene with the mother
                           bandaging a revealed son's head. The bandage is torn off.
                           Curtain goes down. And here is the moment of proof.

                         That climax when the brain acknowledges the world,
                         all values extended into the blood awake.
                         Moment of proof. And as they say Brancusi did,
                         building his bird to extend through soaring air,
                         as Kafka planned stories that draw to eternity
                         through time extended. And the climax strikes.

                         Love touches so that months after the look of
                         blue stare of love, the footbeat on the heart
                         is translated into the pure cry of birds
                         following air-cries, or poems, the new scene.
                         Moment of proof. That strikes long after act.

                        They fear it. They turn away, hand up, palm out
                        fending off moment of proof, the straight look, poem.
                        The prolonged wound-consciousness after the bullet's
                                 shot.
                        The prolonged love after the look is dead,
                        the yellow joy after the song of the sun.