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That’s why I want to speak to you now. To say: no person, trying to take responsibility for her or his identity, should have to be so alone.

Adrienne Rich

We need to imagine a world in which every woman is the presiding genius of her own body.
ADRIENNE RICH

Body Children Genius Imagine Motherhood New Relationship Woman World
The liar leads an existence of unutterable loneliness.
ADRIENNE RICH

Existence Liar Loneliness Lying Unutterable
When someone with the authority of a teacher, say, describes the world and you are not in it, there is a moment of psychic disequilibrium, as if you looked into a mirror and saw nothing. Yet you know you exist and others like you, that this is a game with mirrors.
ADRIENNE RICH

Authority Describe Disequilibrium Individual Strength Mirror Physic Teacher World
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
Lesbian existence comprises both the breaking of a taboo and the rejection of a compulsory way of life. It is also a direct or indirect attack on the male right of access to women.
ADRIENNE RICH

Breaking Comprise Compulsory Existence Heterosexuality Lesbian Life Male Rejection Taboo
No one ever told us we had to study our lives,make of our lives a study, as if learning natural historyor music, that we should beginwith the simple exercises firstand slowly go on tryingthe hard ones.
ADRIENNE RICH

Exercise Goes History Learning Music Natural Simple Study Told
When someone with the authority of a teacher describes the world and you’re not in it, there’s a moment of psychic disequilibrium, as if you looked into a mirror and saw nothing.
ADRIENNE RICH

Authority Disequilibrium Mirror Moment Psychic Teacher World
But nothing less than the most radical imagination will carry us beyond this place, beyond the mere struggle for survival, to that lucid recognition of our possibilities which will keep us impatient, and unresigned to mere survival.
ADRIENNE RICH

Envying Imagination Imagine Place Possibilities Struggle Survival Unresigned
When men – insofar as they are embodiments of the patriarchal idea – have become dangerous to children and other living things, themselves included
ADRIENNE RICH

Children Dangerous Embodiment Idea Loving Man Other Patriarchal Themselves
Much male fear of feminism is infantilism–the longing to remain the mother’s son, to possess a woman who exists purely for him.
ADRIENNE RICH

Exist Fear Feminism Infantilism Longing Male Mother Much Purely Remain Son
A thinking woman sleeps with monsters.
ADRIENNE RICH

Monster Sleep Think Thinking Woman
Poems are like dreams: in them you put what you don’t know you know.
ADRIENNE RICH

Dream Know Like Poem Put
For now, poetry has the capacity – in its own ways and by its own means – to remind us of something we are forbidden to see.
ADRIENNE RICH

Capacity Forbidden Mean Remind Something Trying Way Woman
Those who speak largely of the human condition are usually those most exempt from its oppressions – whether of sex, race, or servitude.
ADRIENNE RICH

Condition Exempt Human Oppression Race Servitude Sex Speak
You have to be free to play around with the notion that day might be night, love might be hate; nothing can be too sacred for the imagination to turn into its opposite or to call experimentally by another name. For writing is re-naming.
ADRIENNE RICH

Free Hate Night Nothing Notion Play Sacred Writing
A president cannot meaningfully honor certain token artists while the people at large are so dishonored.’”
ADRIENNE RICH

Artist Dishonoured Honor Legal People President

That’s why I want to speak to you now. To say: no person, trying to take responsibility for her or his identity, should have to be so alone.

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That’s why I want to speak to you now. To say: no person, trying to take responsibility for her or his identity, should have to be so alone.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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