Silence and Spaces in Muriel Rukeyser's "The Speed of Darkness"

The announcer introduces Rukeyser.

She has published ten volumes of poetry, which include such books as The Green Wave, The Turning Wind, Beast and View, U.S. 1, Theory of Flight, Body of Waking, Waterlily Fire, and The Speed of Darkness, amongst others.

She has published essays, a biography--she's working on a biography now. She has published a novel called The Orgy. She has published translations of the Mexican Writer Octavio Paz, and the Swedish poet Gunnar Ekelof. She has published a number of children's books. And, what else can I say?

She is a New Yorker. She was born in New York, she lives in New York, and so forth. I now introduce Muriel Rukeyser.

The audience applaudes.

Thank you. It sounds peculiar when it's said that way, you know. It just means that I've been writing poems all along, and that sometimes there's been some prose or something--film, prose, whatever it is--that spills into the poem, that feeds into the poems.

And they lie all the time about the poems, to us, you know, about all of our poems. They say it's something very odd and rare, and people who do it are very odd. If a man does it, he's sexually questionable; if a woman does it, she's sexually questionable.

Rukeyser's focus on the lies of poetry and "if a man does it, he's sexually questionable; if a woman does it, she's sexually questionable," is informed by her own queerness and how she uses silence to create new forms of speech. In the context of her later poem, "The Speed of Darkness," spaces between stanzas are not empty but embody this queerness as they employ silence to refuse conventional poetic forms. Too, these silences further reenforce the "questionable" nature sexuality made present in her poetry, demonstrating Rukeyser's resistance to the import of spoken word.

The audience laughs.

Besides, very few people do it. And it's all lies, you know.

There's a company in the United States that's made a fortune on the premise that everybody takes a snapshot at some time or other. And I would like to ask you--and this is apart from all critical standards, all criteria, all faculty and institutions, apart from any of that--I would like to ask a question: how many of you here has ever written a poem, would you put up your hands please?

The audience laughs.

Thank you.

I'm always nervous before I ask the question. I ask the question, now, in all rooms, no matter how few or many people there are, and if the universities would generally look around to see if the basketball team is there, but there's always the moment of silence, and looking around first. And then, generally, quite slowly, almost all the hands go up. Maybe four or five do not put up their hands. And if I wait around afterwards, and with any luck and favorable wins, the four or five people come up to me and will say something like: I was fifteen, it was a love poem, it stank.

The audience laughs.

The thing is, it's a human activity; we all do it. We lie about it, you know, and they lie about it to us. And, thanks now to the young, the poets, maybe, a few other people one could name together, maybe we don't lie so much--so much as we used to. Maybe we don't lie about this anymore.

Rukeyser's repeated discussion of lies and lying--such as her call to not lie about the humanity activity with which poetry is concerned--is embedded with what she feels is forced into silence. Her poetry foregrounds the human activity unsaid in lies by using silence as a container for speaking and audibly revealing new moments for speech and rhetorical action.

Maybe we don't lie about sex, maybe we don't lie about poetry. They seem to lie a great deal about politics instead. It seems to shift around.

The audience laughs.

But, there are these, and the fact is: we all write poems. It is something we do. We come to this part of experience: You get a very, very rainy evening; why do poeple come and listen to poems? Or you've got some marvelous summer night; why do people come and listen to poems?

It's partly out of curiosity and looking at the person and I go to see: What is that breathing behind, what is that heartbeat, the breathing goes against the heartbeat and these rhythms are set up, and the involuntary muscles and you see the person do it but beyond that, something is what we called shared--something is arrived at--we come to something with almost unmediated that is the poem among us, between us, there, we're reaching each other, you're giving me whatever silence you are giving me and it comes to me with great strength, your silence.

Rukeyser speaks to the shared experience of poetry and silence, saying that "you're giving me whatever silence you are giving me and it comes to me with great strength, your silence." In this evocative moment, she locates silences as a relational activity that gains force and meaning in the shared experience of betweenness and other-than-spoken word. Too, the listening-audience creates these silences; the listener "gives" silence meaning through presence and attention.

Somebody said "primadonna," you know, or I'm going give this to the audience and the conductor cause that's what you think--you're going to get it from the audience.

That's where it comes from, in a funny way.

So, this mediation, it is not a description, it is not only the music and it, although certainly the reinforcement of sound--the sound climbing up and finally reaching a place, the last word; the sound that begins with the first breathing, the breath of the title.

Keats doing "Ode to a Nightingale." We hardly ever say "ode." Nobody says "nightingale." But Keats, having said that, never has to say it again. It's a bird. You find it in these things. But, from the beginning--from the first moment--that is, the first breath, the thing that is made as, suggestion, breath, what my life has been, whatever that is- what your lives have been.

The last poem I'll read this evening is a group. The group is called "The Speed of Darkness."

They're short poems and I'll just pause between poems. There should be numbers doing up in back of me. One, two, three. I'll just pause. "The Speed of Darkness."

The audience laughs at Rukeyser's comment about slides going up behind her.

Whoever despises the clitoris despises the penis. Whoever despises the penis despises the cunt. Whoever despises the cunt despises the life of the child. Resurrection, music, silence, and surf.

Rukeyser pauses between the first and second stanza while reading "The Speed of Darkness."

No longer speaking. Listening with the whole body. And with every drop of blood. Overtaken by silence. But this same silence is become speech, with the speed of darkness.

Rukeyser pauses between the second and third stanza while reading "The Speed of Darkness."

Stillness during war, the lake. The unmoving spruces. Glints over the water. Faces, voices. You are far away. A tree that trembles. I am the tree that trembles and trembles.

Rukeyser pauses between the third and fourth stanza while reading "The Speed of Darkness."

After the lifting of the mist, after the lift of the heavy rains, the sky stands clear and the cries of the city risen in day. I remember the buildings are space walled, to let space be used for living. I mind this room is space this drinking glass is space whose boundary of glass let’s me give you drink and space to drink your hand, my hand being space containing skies and constellations. Your face carries the reaches of air. I know I am space my words are air.

Rukeyser pauses between the fourth and fifth stanza while reading "The Speed of Darkness."

Between between, the man, act exact. Woman, in curve senses in their maze, frail orbits, green tries, games of stars, shape of the body speaking its evidence.

Rukeyser pauses between the fifth and sixth stanza while reading "The Speed of Darkness."

I look across at the real, vulnerable, involved, naked; devoted to the present of all I care for. The world of its history leading to this moment.

Rukeyser pauses between the sixth and seventh stanza while reading "The Speed of Darkness."

Life the announcer. I assure you there are many ways to have a child. I bastard mother promise you there are many ways to be born. They all come forth in their own grace.

Rukeyser pauses between the seventh and eigth stanza while reading "The Speed of Darkness."

Ends of the earth join tonight with blazing stars upon their meeting. These sons, these sons fall burning into Asia.

Rukeyser pauses between the eighth and ninth stanza while reading "The Speed of Darkness."

Time comes into it. Say it. Say it. The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.

Rukeyser pauses between the ninth and tenth stanza while reading "The Speed of Darkness."

Lying, blazing beside me, you rear beautifully and up--your thinking face--erotic body reaching in all its colors and lights--your erotic face colored and lit--not colored body-and-face but now entire colors, lights. The world thinking and reaching.

Rukeyser pauses between the tenth and eleventh stanza while reading "The Speed of Darkness."

The river flows past the city. Water goes down to tomorrow making its children. I hear their unborn voices. I am working out the vocabulary of my silence.

Rukeyser pauses between the eleventh and twelfth stanza while reading "The Speed of Darkness."

Big-boned man young and of my dream. Struggles to get the live bird out of his throat. I am he am I? Dreaming? I am the bird am I? I am the throat? A bird with a curved beak. It could slit anything, the throat-bird. Drawn up slowly. The curved blades, not large. Bird emerges, wet, being born. Begins to sing.

Rukeyser pauses between the twelfth and thirteenth stanza while reading "The Speed of Darkness."

My night awake staring at the broad rough jewel, the copper roof across the way, thinking of the poet yet unborn in this dark who will be the throat of these hours. No. Of those hours. Who will speak these days, if not I, if not you?

Rukeyser pauses after the thirteenth stanza while reading "The Speed of Darkness."

Thank you very much.

The audience applaudes.

We wish to announce that the next reading will be by F.R. Scott, and that will be on February 14th--at the same time-- in the theater in the basement of this building. Thank you.

The audience speaks quietly as recording continues.