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The dialectic between change and continuity is a painful but deeply instructive one, in personal life as in the life of a people.

Adrienne Rich

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
The password is a flicker of an eyelash.
ADRIENNE RICH

Eyelash Eyelashes Flicker Password
Poetry is the liquid voice that can wear through stone.
ADRIENNE RICH

Liquid Poetry Stone Voice Wear Writing
The impulse to create begins – often terribly and fearfully – in a tunnel of silence.
ADRIENNE RICH

Create Fearfully Impulse Real Silence Terribly Tunnel Voice
Whether of love and sexuality or creativity or the sense of connectedness with other beings, human and otherwise?
ADRIENNE RICH

Connectedness Creativity Human Love Sense Sexually
In [family snapshots] the flow of profane time has been stopped and a sacred interval of self-conscious revelation has been cut from it by the edge of the picture frame and the light of the sun or the flash.
ADRIENNE RICH

Conscious Cutting Interval Light Profane Revelation Self Stopped Time
Nothing could have prepared me for the realization that I was a mother … when I knew I was still in a state of uncreation myself.
ADRIENNE RICH

Knew Mother Nothing Prepared Realization State Uncertain
In America we have only the present tense. I am in danger. You are in danger.
ADRIENNE RICH

Country Danger Present Tense
A president cannot meaningfully honor certain token artists while the people at large are so dishonored.’”
ADRIENNE RICH

Artist Dishonoured Honor Legal People President
If you teach, you see this is not true. It may be that newer generations do not worship the text as some of their elders do.
ADRIENNE RICH

Been Compared Elder Generation Teach Worship
There’s been real hostility toward political poetry in the U.S., hostility or, at best, incomprehension. I’m speaking of those who have institutional power over what gets published, over grants andprizes and reviewing.
ADRIENNE RICH

Country Incomprehension Institution Male Political Power Real Speaking
Responsibility to yourself means that you don’t fall for shallow and easy solutions-it means that you refuse to sell your talents and aspirations short.
ADRIENNE RICH

Aspiration Easy Fall Mean Refuse Responsibility Sell Shallow Solution Talent Yourself
The unconscious wants truth, as the body does. The complexity and fecundity of dreams come from the complexity and fecundity of the unconscious struggling to fulfill that desire. The complexity and fecundity of poetry come from the same struggle.
ADRIENNE RICH

Body Complexity Desire Dream Fecundity Struggle Struggling Truth Unconcious
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
There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep, and still be counted as warriors. (I make up this strange, angry packet for you, threaded with love.) I think you thought there was no such place for you, and perhaps there was none then.
ADRIENNE RICH

Among Counted Down Must None Perhaps Sit Weep
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

The dialectic between change and continuity is a painful but deeply instructive one, in personal life as in the life of a people.

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The dialectic between change and continuity is a painful but deeply instructive one, in personal life as in the life of a people.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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