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I do not think [poetry] is more, or less, necessary than food, shelter, health, education, decent working conditions. It is as necessary.

Adrienne Rich

Poetry is above all a concentration of the power of language, which is the power of our ultimate relationship to everything in the universe.
ADRIENNE RICH

Concentration Language ower Poetry Power Relationship Ultimate Universe
Or those who still believe that language is ‘only words’ and that an old language is good enough for our descriptions of the world we are trying to transform.
ADRIENNE RICH

Believe Description Language Old Transform
There is no simple formula for the relationship of art to justice…In the end, I don’t think we can separate art from overall human dignity and hope. My concern for my country is inextricable from my concerns as an artist.
ADRIENNE RICH

Art Country Formula Human Justice m Relationship Overall Separate Simple Think
… this world gives no room to be what we dreamt of being
ADRIENNE RICH

Dreamt Giving Room World
The unconscious wants truth. It ceases to speak to those who want something else more than truth.
ADRIENNE RICH

Cease More Something Speak Truth Unconscious Want
Waiting for children to grow up, or for the birth of a new child, or for menopause.
ADRIENNE RICH

Birth Child Children Grow Up Waiting
To read as if your life depended on it would mean to let into your reading your beliefs, the swirl of your dreamlife, the physical sensations of your ordinary carnal life; and simultaneously.
ADRIENNE RICH

Belief Depended Dreamlife Intelligent Mean Multiple Choice Physical Reading Sensation Swirl
The necessity of poetry has to be stated over and over, but only to those who have reason to fear its power.
ADRIENNE RICH

Believe Fear Necessity Poetry Power Reason Trying
Each feminist work has tended to be received as if it emerged from nowhere; as if each one of us had lived, thought, and worked without any historical past or contextual present.
ADRIENNE RICH

Emerged Feminist Historical Justice Lived Past Present Received Tended Thinking Work
The [Vietnam War Memorial] Wall became a magnet for citizens of every generation, class, race, and relationship to the war perhaps because it is the only great public monument that allows the anesthetized holes in the heart to fill with a truly national grief.
ADRIENNE RICH

Citizen Class Generation Grief Magnet National Race Relationship Wall War
Can you remember? when we thought the poets taught how to live?
ADRIENNE RICH

Life Live Poet Poetry Remember Taught
We might possess every technological resource… but if our language is inadequate, our vision remains formless.
ADRIENNE RICH

formless Inadequate Language Posses Remain Resource Romance Running Technological Thinking
I am suspicious – first of all, in myself – of adopted mysticisms of glib spirituality, above all of white people’s tendency to … vampirize American Indian, or African, or Asian, or other ‘exotic’ ways of understanding.
ADRIENNE RICH

Adopted Country Exotic Myself Mysticisms People Suspicious Tendency Understanding White
I’ve known great happiness in my life along with great darkness, and a question that has repeatedly entered my poetry has been, how do we use the direct experience of happiness that may be given us.
ADRIENNE RICH

Along Creativity Darkness Entered Experience Given Happiness Life Poetry Repeatedly Use
and I ask myself and you, which of our visions will claim us which will we claim how will we go on living how will we touch, what will we know what will we say to each other.
ADRIENNE RICH

Aak Claim Goes Myself On Touch Vision
Only where there is language is there world.
ADRIENNE RICH

Language Only World

I do not think [poetry] is more, or less, necessary than food, shelter, health, education, decent working conditions. It is as necessary.

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I do not think [poetry] is more, or less, necessary than food, shelter, health, education, decent working conditions. It is as necessary.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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