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It’s as if, in the mother’s eyes, her smile, her stroking touch, the child first reads the message:’You are there!’

Adrienne Rich

The woman’s body is the terrain on which patriarchy is erected.
ADRIENNE RICH

Body Erected Patriarchy Terrain Woman
A life I didn’t choose chose me: even my tools are the wrong ones for what I have to do.
ADRIENNE RICH

Choose Even Life One Tool Wrong
To conjure with the passive culture and adapt to its rules is to degrade and deny the fullness of our meaning and intention.
ADRIENNE RICH

Adapt Conquer Cultural Degrade Fullness Intention Meaning Passive
If I cling to circumstances I could feel not responsible. Only she who says she did not choose, is the loser in the end.
ADRIENNE RICH

Choose Circumstance End Feel Loser Responsible
I am the androgyne, I am the living mind you fail to describe in your dead language the lost noun, the verb surviving only in the infinitive the letters of my name are written under the lids of the newborn child
ADRIENNE RICH

Androgyne Child Children Dead Describe Infinite Language Living Lost Mind Name Newborn Noun Surviving Verb
I’d call it love if love didn’t take so many years but lust too is a jewel.
ADRIENNE RICH

Call Jewels Love Sex Tale Year
Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you; it means learning to respect and use your own brains and instincts; hence, grappling with hard work.
ADRIENNE RICH

Hard Learning Mean Refusing Responsibility Strong Thinking Women Work
Across the curve of the earth, there are women getting up before dawn, in the blackness before the point of light, in the twilight before sunrise; there are women rising earlier than men and children to break the ice, to start the stove, to put up the pap.
ADRIENNE RICH

Blackness Children Dawn Light Running Twilight Women
I am always interested in the ways of scoring the sound of the poem, especially a poem with long lines.
ADRIENNE RICH

Bridges Especially Interested Line Long Poem Scoring Space Thinking
the channel of art can only become clogged and misdirected by the artist’s concern with merely temporary and local disturbances. The song is higher than the struggle.
ADRIENNE RICH

Art Artist Channel Clogged Concern Merely Misdirected Song Struggle Temporary
Motherhood, in the sense of an intense, reciprocal relationship with a particular child, or children, is one part of female process; it is not an identity for all time.
ADRIENNE RICH

Child Children Female Identity Intense Motherhood Process Reciprocal
Change is not a threat to your life, but an invitation to live.
ADRIENNE RICH

Change Invitation Live Threat
I feel more helpless with you than without you.
ADRIENNE RICH

Feel Helpless More Without You
Re-vision – the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction – is for woman more than a chapter in cultural history: it is an act of survival.
ADRIENNE RICH

Act Back Chapter Critical Cultural Direction Entering Eye Eyes Fresh History Looking More Self Survival Test Woman
The worker can unionize, go out on strike; mothers are divided from each other in homes, tied to their children by compassionate bonds; our wildcat strikes have most often taken the form of physical or mental breakdown.
ADRIENNE RICH

Children Day Inspiring Mother Strike Tied Unionize Worker
Even the most angry, even the darkest, even the most grief-stricken, and even the most embittered art has that element somewhere behind it. Because how could you be so despairing, so embittered, if you had not had something you loved that you lost?
ADRIENNE RICH

Angry Darkest Embittered Grief Most Stricken

It’s as if, in the mother’s eyes, her smile, her stroking touch, the child first reads the message:’You are there!’

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It’s as if, in the mother’s eyes, her smile, her stroking touch, the child first reads the message:’You are there!’

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Popular Authors

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