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he ocean on whose surface vessels (personified as female) can ride but in whose depth sailors meet their death and monsters conceal themselves.

Adrienne Rich

Grief held back from the lips wears at the heart; the drop that refused to join the river dried up in the dust.
ADRIENNE RICH

Dried Drop Dust Grief Heart Lip Refused River Wear
Women have always been seen as waiting: waited to be asked, waiting for our menses, in fear lest they do or do not come, waiting for men to come home from wars, or from work.
ADRIENNE RICH

Always Asked Children Come Fear Growing Lest Menses Up Waited Waiting War Women
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
A language is a map of our failures.
ADRIENNE RICH

Failure Language Map
When my dreams showed signs of becoming politically correct no unruly images escaping beyond borders … then I began to wonder
ADRIENNE RICH

Becoming Border Correct Dream Escaping Political Politically Showed Sign
In a world where language and naming are power, silence is oppression, is violence.
ADRIENNE RICH

Language Naming Oppression Power Silence Violence World
The women’s movement appeared at a very crucial moment in my life. There was a whole political movement asking such questions and others I had never asked.
ADRIENNE RICH

Apparated Asking Crucial Movement Political Voice Women
The so-called multiple-choice examination sheet with the number 2 pencil to mark one choice and one choice only?
ADRIENNE RICH

Choice Examination Multiple Number Pencil Sheet
I believe that words can help us move or keep us paralysed, and that our choices of language and verbal tone have something – a great deal – to do with how we live our lives and whom we end up speaking with and hearing.
ADRIENNE RICH

Believe Choice Help Keep Language Life Move Paralysed Respect
I think of poetry as something out there in the world and within each of us. I don’t mean that everyone can write poetry – it’s an art, a craft.
ADRIENNE RICH

Art Craft Each Everyone Mean Poetry Something World Writing
It can speak to people who have themselves felt like monsters and say: you are not alone, this is not monstrous. It can disturb and enrapture.
ADRIENNE RICH

Alone Disturb Enrapture Monster Monstrous People Speak Themselves
Heterosexuality has been forcibly and subliminally imposed on women. Yet everywhere women have resisted it, often at the cost of physical torture, imprisonment, psychosurgery, social ostracism, and extreme poverty.
ADRIENNE RICH

Cost Forcibly Heterosexuality Imposed Poverty Subliminally Woman
We must use what we have to invent what we desire.
ADRIENNE RICH

Desire Dream Invent Lose Success Use
Art, whose honesty must work through artifice, cannot avoid cheating truth.
ADRIENNE RICH

Art Artifice Cheating Honesty Truth
We lose touch with parts of ourselves defined as unacceptable by that consciousness; with the vital toughness and visionary strength of the angry grandmothers, the fierce market women of the Ibo’s Women’s War.
ADRIENNE RICH

Consciousness Grandmother Market Ourselves Toughness Unacceptable Women
I guess what concerns me always is the need for a field, a rich compost, for any art to flourish. But however isolate or unheard you may feel, if you have the need to write poetry, are compelled to write it, you go on, whether there is resonance or not.
ADRIENNE RICH

Art Compost Concern Feel Field Flourish Guess Isolate Need Rich Unheard Writing

he ocean on whose surface vessels (personified as female) can ride but in whose depth sailors meet their death and monsters conceal themselves.

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he ocean on whose surface vessels (personified as female) can ride but in whose depth sailors meet their death and monsters conceal themselves.

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