American Samizdat: The Way of Poetry Is the Way of Antifascism.

Muriel Rukeyser

This heart, naked and knocking, going in clouds,
Smoke and a cry of light.
In pain, the voice of pain. The shadow of your cry.

~ Muriel Rukeyser

Poets are not necessarily antifascist. Poetry is antifascist. A poem is not necessarily antifascist. Poetry is antifascist.

“The poetic as a way of thinking and feeling — against the constrictions of conformity and the profit-motive.”

When I stopped writing screenplays at the start of the new millennium (seemed momentous timing), I said to some around me, If I’m not going to make any money from writing, I’m really not going to make any money – I’m going to write poetry.

In our time, they say there is free speech.
They say there is no penalty for poets,
There is no penalty for writing poems.
They say this. This is the penalty.

~ Muriel Rukeyser, “In Our Time” from The Speed of Darkness

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Today we feature the radical work of Muriel Rukeyser, whose poetics tr…