The 'idea' for the poem, which may come as an image thrown against memory, as a sound of words that sets off a traveling of sound and meaning, as a curve of emotion (a form) plotted by certain crises of events or image or sound, or as a title which evokes a sense of inner relations; this is the first 'surfacing' of the poem. Then a period of stillness may follow.
Muriel RukeyserIf there were no poetry on any day in the world, poetry would be invented that day. For there would be an intolerable hunger.
Muriel RukeyserPunctuation is biological. It is the physical indication of the body-rhythms which the reader is to acknowledge.
Muriel Rukeyser