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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

In the interstices of language lie powerful secrets of the culture.
ADRIENNE RICH

Culture Interstices Language Lying Powerful Secret
My heart is moved by all I cannot save: so much has been destroyed I have to cast my lot with those who age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.
ADRIENNE RICH

Age Cast Destroyed Extraordinary Heart Lot Moved perversely Power Reconstitute Save World
If you think you can grasp me, think again: my story flows in more than one direction, a delta springing from the river bed with its five fingers spread.
ADRIENNE RICH

Again Delta Direction Flow Grasp One River Springing Story Thinking
Poetry can add its grain to an accumulation of consciousness against the idea that there is no alternative – that we’re just in the great flow of capitalism and it can never be any different – that this is human destiny, this is human nature.
ADRIENNE RICH

Alternative Consciousness Destiny Flow Grain Idea
In order to live a fully human life we require not only control of our bodies (though control is a prerequisite); we must touch the unity and resonance of our physicality, our bond with the natural order, the corporeal grounds of our intelligence.
ADRIENNE RICH

Bodies Body Control Fully Human Intelligence Life Natural Order Physical Unity
It’s been associated with the power of the word, with the sacred, with magic and transformation, with the oral narratives that help a people cohere.
ADRIENNE RICH

Choice People Power Sacred Transformation
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
Sometimes I seem to myself, in my feelings toward these tiny guiltless beings, a monster of selfishness and intolerance.
ADRIENNE RICH

Feeling Guileless Intolerance Myself Selfishness Sometimes
It iscrucial that we understand lesbian/feminism in the deepest, most radical sense: as that love for ourselves and other women, that commitment to the freedom of all of us, which transcends the category of “sexual preference” and the issue of civil rights.
ADRIENNE RICH

Commitment Deepest Integrity Iscrucial Issue Lesbian Ourselves Radical Sense Understand
Whatever is unnamed, undepicted in images, whatever is omitted from biography, censored in collections of letters, whatever is misnamed as something else.
ADRIENNE RICH

Biography Censored Collection Image Letter Lying Memories Omitted Undepiched Unnamed
We have no familiar, ready-made name for a woman who defines herself, by choice, neither in relation to children nor to men, who is self-identified, who has chosen herself.
ADRIENNE RICH

Chosen Enter Envying Freedom Herself Identifies Imagine Room Think
Most women have not even been able to touch this anger, except to drive it inward like a rusted nail.
ADRIENNE RICH

Able Anger Except Inward Nail Rusted Touch Women
If the imagination is to transcend and transform experience it has to question, to challenge, to conceive of alternatives, perhaps to the very life you are living at the moment.
ADRIENNE RICH

Alternatives Challenges Experience Imagination Imagine Question
One line typed twenty years ago can be blazed on a wall in spraypaint to glorify art as detachment or torture of those we did not love but also did not want to kill.
ADRIENNE RICH

Art Blazed Detachment Glorify Love Spraypaint Torture Typed Wall Year
A patriot is one who wrestles for the soul of her country as she wrestles for her own being.
ADRIENNE RICH

Country Own Patriotism Soul Wrestles
Writers matter in a society to the extent that we can help that society hear its unvoiced longing, encounter its erased and disregarded selves, break with complacency, numbness, despair.
ADRIENNE RICH

Complacency Despair Disregarded Encounter Erased Extent Hear Help Matter Numbness Self Selves Society Unvoiced

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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