I’ve just read Muriel Rukeyser’s The Life of Poetry (ISBN 0-96381-833-3). An extraordinary book.
Here is the paragraph which hit me right between the eyes. Here’s where she hits the nail, squarely, on the head….
If our imaginative response to life were complete, if we were fully conscious of emotion, if we apprehended surely the relations that make us know the truth and the relations that make us know the beautiful,we would be….what? The heroes of our myths, acting perfectly among these faculties, loving appropriately and living with appropriate risk, spring up at the question. We invented them to let us approach that life. But they remind us of our own lives. They offer us a hope and a perspective, not of the past in which they were made – not that alone – but of the future. For if we lived in full response to the earth, to each other, and to ourselves, we would not breathe a supernatural climate; we would be more human.
It’s hard to put this in other words, but her insight into the value of imagination, of being aware of our emotional responses, and of how our relations to ourselves, others and to the rest of nature is the key to becoming fully human is fabulous.
What do we become if we develop such a FULL response to LIFE? Heroes. The heroes of our own myths. And THIS is how we gain both perspective on life and hope for the future.
Heroes Not Zombies 
thank you Amy for reminding me where we came across Muriel Rukeyser…..http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/e7f0732c-5160-11de-84c3-00144feabdc0.html
Thanks you for posting such a lovely quote. I’m the assistant editor at the press that reissued The Life of Poetry, and wanted to let your readers know they can order it here: http://www.parispress.org/authors/rukeyser.shtml
along with Rukeyser’s other prose works (her travelogue of Ireland, The Orgy, and her play Houdini: A Musical).
Thanks again for spreading the word about this remarkable poet.
There is a well-known book that says, in the beginning was the word. Goethe’s take on this was, in the beginning was the deed. The existentialists took the primary act as foundational. The act may be the firing on neurons in the brain that leads to a response of musculature and then some action that is recognizable, like getting out of bed.
The hero acts in the knowledge he is responsible for the consequences. In my professional life, I help people write books. My mantra is, nothing exists until it’s written down. I understand this assertion is domain specific, yet it’s helpful for people who prevaricate. It takes courage to commit your thoughts to virtual paper, especially in the beginning when those thoughts are (necessarily) under-formed. In other words, you have to give yourself permission to make a mess. Later comes the polishing that results in glittering prose.
I’ve just finished writing and reading a story for my six-year-old grandson (you can hear it at slightlytrue.com). He is blown off the roof of his castle on a kite and ends up in the Land of the Black Castle where he confronts the insulting Sir Egbert (fuffy pants) Rotter, perhaps the smelliest of all knights.
When I was about eight I went to a school where the headmaster would fly into rages. I was terrified of this angry adult. However, my six-year-old hero gets some guidance on how to deal with harsh words and demonstrate his bravery, and ultimate victory.
So much education is not about heroic self-assertion, risk tolerance, and bravery. It is about compliance, or doing what you’re told; and doing it well (the first time). I was surprised how this little story unfolded for me my own relationship to power.
The heroes of the Greeks didn’t have much interiority. However, today a hero, for me, gains a sense of a personal world that may or may not have much to do with a societal one.
In my view, how to be a hero is to act. It may not be confronting power. It may be a small act and so build the courage to take further acts.