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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

The difficulty of saying I-a phrase from the East German novelist Christa Wolf. But once having said it, as we realize the necessity to go further, isn’t there a difficulty of saying ‘we’? You cannot speak for me.
ADRIENNE RICH

Country Difficulty Further Movement Novelist People Phrases Realize Two Wolf
Practicing till strengthand accuracy became one with the daringto leap into transcendence, take the chance of breaking down in the wild arpeggioor faulting the full sentence of the fugue.
ADRIENNE RICH

Accuracy Arpeggioor Breaking Chance Daring Down Faulting Fugue Leap Practising Sentence Strnghland Transcendence
Art, whose honesty must work through artifice, cannot avoid cheating truth.
ADRIENNE RICH

Art Artifice Cheating Honesty Truth
Since men are loyal at least to their own world-view, their laws of brotherhood and self-interest.
ADRIENNE RICH

Brotherhood Interest Least Loyal Men Own Self Since View World
In a history of spiritual rupture, a social compact built on fantasy and collective secrets, poetry becomes more necessary than ever: it keeps the underground aquifers flowing; it is the liquid voice that can wear through stone.
ADRIENNE RICH

Aquifer Collective History Rupture Secret Spiritual Voice
But can you imagine how some of them were envying you your freedom to work, to think, to travel, to enter a room as yourself, not as some child’s mother or some man’s wife?
ADRIENNE RICH

Children Enter Freedom Man Mother Room Think Travel Wife Work
It requires enormous commitment like any art. But there’s a core of desire in each of us and poetry goes to and comes from that core. It’s the social, economic, institutional gap that makes it difficult.
ADRIENNE RICH

Art Come Committed Desire Economic Enormous Institution Poetry Require Social
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
The liar leads an existence of unutterable loneliness.
ADRIENNE RICH

Existence Liar Loneliness Lying Unutterable
Poetry is the liquid voice that can wear through stone.
ADRIENNE RICH

Liquid Poetry Stone Voice Wear Writing
Any woman’s death diminishes me.
ADRIENNE RICH

Death Diminish Diminishes Woman
I don’t think we can separate art from overall human dignity and hope.
ADRIENNE RICH

Art Dignity Hope Overall Thinking
A life I didn’t choose chose me: even my tools are the wrong ones for what I have to do.
ADRIENNE RICH

Choose Even Life One Tool Wrong
The moment when a feeling enters the body/ is political. This touch is political
ADRIENNE RICH

Body Feeling Political Touch
[The poet] is endowed to speak for those who do not have the gift of language, or to see for those who – for whatever reasons – are less conscious of what they are living through.
ADRIENNE RICH

Endowed Gift Language Reason Risk Speak Survival Use
Until we know the assumptions in which we are drenched, we cannot know ourselves.
ADRIENNE RICH

Assumption Drenched Know Ourselves Until

It’s as if, in the mother’s eyes, her smile, her stroking touch, the child first reads the message:’You are there!’

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It’s as if, in the mother’s eyes, her smile, her stroking touch, the child first reads the message:’You are there!’

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Popular Authors

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