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It will take all your heart, it will take all your breath It will be short, it will not be simple

Adrienne Rich

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
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
There is nothing revolutionary whatsoever about the control of women’s bodies by men.
ADRIENNE RICH

Body Control Man Nothing Revolutionary Women
A language is a map of our failures.
ADRIENNE RICH

Failure Language Map
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
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
An honorable human relationship- that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word “love”- is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other.
ADRIENNE RICH

Delicate Honorable Human Love People Process Relationship Self Truth Two Violent
It’s as if, in the mother’s eyes, her smile, her stroking touch, the child first reads the message:’You are there!’
ADRIENNE RICH

Children Day Eye Message Mothers Smile Stroking Read Touch
Only to have a grief equal to all these tears!
ADRIENNE RICH

All Equal Grief Tear Women
There is no ‘the truth,’ ‘a truth’–truth is not one thing, or even a system. It is an increasing complexity.
ADRIENNE RICH

Complexity Increasing One System Thing Truth
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
I am always interested in the ways of scoring the sound of the poem, especially a poem with long lines.
ADRIENNE RICH

Bridges Especially Interested Line Long Poem Scoring Space Thinking
The kind of poetry that interests me is intellectual and moral and political and sexual and sensual – all of that fermenting together.
ADRIENNE RICH

Fermenting Intellectual Interest Kind Moral People Poetry Political Sensual Sexual Together
The words are purposes./The words are maps./I came to see the damage that was done/and the treasures that prevail.
ADRIENNE RICH

Damage Done Map Prevail Purpose Treasure Word
False history gets made all day, any day, the truth of the new is never on the news False history gets written every day … the lesbian archaeologist watches herself sifting her own life out from the shards she’s piecing, asking the clay all questions but her own.
ADRIENNE RICH

Clay Day Every False History Watches Written
The word revolution itself has become not only a dead relic of Leftism, but a key to the deadendedness of male politics.
ADRIENNE RICH

Arctic Deaadnededness Dead Doors Key Leftism Male Politics Revolution Tolerance Word

It will take all your heart, it will take all your breath It will be short, it will not be simple

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It will take all your heart, it will take all your breath It will be short, it will not be simple

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