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I am a woman in the prime of my life, with certain powers and those powers severely limited by authorities whose faces I rarely see.

Adrienne Rich

I am uncomfortable with talking of poetry as a priestly profession, because I have little use for organized religions and priestly hierarchies. They have demoralized, persecuted, so many, including women, gays, non-believers.
ADRIENNE RICH

Gay Organized Poetry Priestly Profession Religion Talking Uncomfortable Use
[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
It is as though the risks of the poet’s existence can be put to some use beyond her own survival.
ADRIENNE RICH

Beyond Existence Own Poet Risk Some Survival
The unconscious wants truth. It ceases to speak to those who want something else more than truth.
ADRIENNE RICH

Cease More Something Speak Truth Unconscious Want
Poetry has always mattered, through human history, through all kinds of cultures, all kinds of violence and human desolation, as well as periods of great human affirmation.
ADRIENNE RICH

Affirmation Culture Desolation Great History Human Kind Magic Mattered People Period Through Violence
The liar often suffers from amnesia. Amnesia is the silence of the unconscious.
ADRIENNE RICH

Amnesia Liar Lying Silence Suffer Unconscious
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
Even the most angry, even the darkest, even the most grief-stricken, and even the most embittered art has that element somewhere behind it. Because how could you be so despairing, so embittered, if you had not had something you loved that you lost?
ADRIENNE RICH

Angry Darkest Embittered Grief Most Stricken
A book of poems doesn’t just come out by chance, an editor has to select it, a publisher has to distribute it or you will never see it.
ADRIENNE RICH

Book Chance Distribute Editor never Poem Select
Increasingly I think of poetry as a theatre of voices, not as coming from a single “I” or from any one position. I want to imagine voices different from my own.
ADRIENNE RICH

Coming Imagine Increasingly Poetry Position Theatre Thinking Voice
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
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
To become a politics of asking women’s questions, demanding a world in which the integrity of all women–not a chosen few–shall be honored and validated in every respect of culture.
ADRIENNE RICH

Culture Demanding Integrity Politics Power Question Respect Validated Women
No woman is really an insider in the institutions fathered by masculine consciousness. When we allow ourselves to believe we are.
ADRIENNE RICH

Believe Consciousness Fathered Insider Inspiring Institution Masculine Really War Woman
I don’t trust them but I’m learning to use them.
ADRIENNE RICH

Don't Learning Trust Use
It is the thirtieth of May, the thirtieth of November, a beginning or an end, we are moving into the solstice and there is so much here I still do not understand.
ADRIENNE RICH

Beginning End May Moving November Solistice

I am a woman in the prime of my life, with certain powers and those powers severely limited by authorities whose faces I rarely see.

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I am a woman in the prime of my life, with certain powers and those powers severely limited by authorities whose faces I rarely see.

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