black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

Most of them, though not all, arewhite and male. But even as American society is unravelling, becoming more violent and punitive, wonderful political poetshave been emerging.

Adrienne Rich

I think my work comes out of both an intense desire for connection and what it means to feel isolated. There’s always going to be a kind of tidal movement back and forth between the two.
ADRIENNE RICH

Connection Going Isolated Kind Mean Movement Thinking Two
When someone with the authority of a teacher, say, describes the world and you are not in it, there is a moment of psychic disequilibrium, as if you looked into a mirror and saw nothing. Yet you know you exist and others like you, that this is a game with mirrors.
ADRIENNE RICH

Authority Describe Disequilibrium Individual Strength Mirror Physic Teacher World
To “see the light” too often has meant rejecting the treasures found in darkness.
ADRIENNE RICH

Darkness Found Light Rejecting Treasure
White hate crimes, white hate speech. I still try to claim I wasn’t brought up to hate. But hate isn’t the half of it. I grew up in the vast encircling presumption of whiteness.
ADRIENNE RICH

Claim Crime Grew Hate Passion Speech Try White
The truth of our bodies and our minds has been mystified to us. We therefore have primary obligation to each other: not to undermine each other’s sense of reality for the sake of expediency; not to gaslight each other.
ADRIENNE RICH

Bodies Expediency Gaslight Instinct Mind Truth
One of the great functions of art is to help us imagine what it is like to be not ourselves, what it is like to be someone or something else.
ADRIENNE RICH

Art Body Function Great Help Imagine Live Ourselves Skin Someone Something
Only to have a grief equal to all these tears!
ADRIENNE RICH

All Equal Grief Tear Women
We may feel bitterly how little our poems can do in the face of seemingly out-of-control technological power and seemingly limitless corporate greed, yet it has always been true that poetry can break isolation.
ADRIENNE RICH

Control Greed Little May Poem Power Technological
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 worker can unionize, go out on strike; mothers are divided from each other in homes, tied to their children by compassionate bonds; our wildcat strikes have most often taken the form of physical or mental breakdown.
ADRIENNE RICH

Children Day Inspiring Mother Strike Tied Unionize Worker
Even where love has run thin the child’s soul musters strength… the rush of purpose to make a life worth living past abandonment building the layers up again over the torn hole.
ADRIENNE RICH

Children Love Loving Past Purpose Run Running Rush Soul Worth
In 1945, just at the end of World War II, the American poet Muriel Rukeyser wrote a remarkable book called The Life of Poetry. In it she says that on any particular day in the world.
ADRIENNE RICH

Book Country End Immediately Poet Remarkable War World Wrote
Lies are usually attempts to make everything simpler – for the liar – than it really is, or ought to be.
ADRIENNE RICH

Attempt Liar Lying Ought Simpler Usually
The necessity of poetry has to be stated over and over, but only to those who have reason to fear its power.
ADRIENNE RICH

Believe Fear Necessity Poetry Power Reason Trying
Motherhood is the great mesh in which all human relations are entangled, in which lurk our most elemental assumptions about love and power.
ADRIENNE RICH

Assumption Elemental Entangled Lurk Mesh Motherhood Relation
I’ve had to guess at her, sewing her skin together as I sew mine, though with a different stitch
ADRIENNE RICH

Different Guess Mine Sew Skin Stitch Together
We have no familiar, ready-made name for a woman who defines herself, by choice, neither in relation to children nor to men, who is self-identified, who has chosen herself.
ADRIENNE RICH

Chosen Enter Envying Freedom Herself Identifies Imagine Room Think
These scars bear witness but whether to repair or to destruction I no longer know.
ADRIENNE RICH

Bear Destruction Longer Scar Witness
If the imagination is to transcend and transform experience it has to question, to challenge, to conceive of alternatives, perhaps to the very life you are living at the moment.
ADRIENNE RICH

Alternatives Challenges Experience Imagination Imagine Question
How we dwelt in two worlds the daughters and the mothers in the kingdom of the sons.
ADRIENNE RICH

Daughter Dwelt Kingdom Mother Son World
The moment of change is the only poem.
ADRIENNE RICH

Change Healing Moment Poem Poetry
Sleeping. Turning in turn like planets rotating in their midnight meadow: a touch is enough to let us know we’re not alone in the universe, even in sleep.
ADRIENNE RICH

Alone Enough Meadow Midnight Planet Rotating Sleep Sleeping Touch Turning
Not biology, but ignorance of ourselves, has been the key to our powerlessness
ADRIENNE RICH

Biology Ignorance Key Ourselves Powerlessness
There is nothing revolutionary whatsoever about the control of women’s bodies by men.
ADRIENNE RICH

Body Control Man Nothing Revolutionary Women
We move but our words stand become responsible for more than we intended and this is verbal privilege
ADRIENNE RICH

Intended Moving Our Privilege Responsible Verbal Words
The longer I live the more I mistrust theatricality, the false glamour cast by performance, the more I know its poverty beside the truths we are salvaging from the splitting-open of our lives. -from “Transcendental Etude
ADRIENNE RICH

False Glamour Longer Mistrust Performance Poverty Theatricality Transcendental
We who were loved will never unlive that crippling fever.
ADRIENNE RICH

Crippling Fever Love Loved Unlive

Most of them, though not all, arewhite and male. But even as American society is unravelling, becoming more violent and punitive, wonderful political poetshave been emerging.

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Popular Authors

Most of them, though not all, arewhite and male. But even as American society is unravelling, becoming more violent and punitive, wonderful political poetshave been emerging.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Adrienne Rich Quotes