I’ve known great happiness in my life along with great darkness, and a question that has repeatedly entered my poetry has been, how do we use the direct experience of happiness that may be given us.

ADRIENNE RICH

black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

I’ve known great happiness in my life along with great darkness, and a question that has repeatedly entered my poetry has been, how do we use the direct experience of happiness that may be given us.

Adrienne Rich

I am an instrument in the shape/ of a woman trying to translate pulsations/ into images for the relief of the body/ and the reconstruction of the mind.

ADRIENNE RICH

I am an instrument in the shape/ of a woman trying to translate pulsations/ into images for the relief of the body/ and the reconstruction of the mind.
ADRIENNE RICH

relief Trying
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
We have seen over and over that white male historians in general have tended to dismiss any history they didn’t themselves write,on the grounds that it is unserious, unscholarly, a fad, too “political,” “merely” oral and thus unreliable.
ADRIENNE RICH

General Male Merely Over Seen Themselves White
Until we understand the assumptions in which we are drenched we cannot know ourselves. And this drive to self-knowledge, for women, is more than a search for identity.
ADRIENNE RICH

Assumption Drenched More Refusal
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

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

Day Inspiring Strike Tied Unionize Worker
The mind’s passion is all for singling out. Obscurity has another tale to tell.

ADRIENNE RICH

The mind’s passion is all for singling out. Obscurity has another tale to tell.
ADRIENNE RICH

Another Obscurity Singling Tale
If I cling to circumstances I could feel not responsible. Only she who says she did not choose, is the loser in the end.

ADRIENNE RICH

If I cling to circumstances I could feel not responsible. Only she who says she did not choose, is the loser in the end.
ADRIENNE RICH

Circumstance End Feel Loser Responsible
Art, whose honesty must work through artifice, cannot avoid cheating truth.

ADRIENNE RICH

Art, whose honesty must work through artifice, cannot avoid cheating truth.
ADRIENNE RICH

Artifice Cheating
Sometimes I seem to myself, in my feelings toward these tiny guiltless beings, a monster of selfishness and intolerance.

ADRIENNE RICH

Sometimes I seem to myself, in my feelings toward these tiny guiltless beings, a monster of selfishness and intolerance.
ADRIENNE RICH

Guileless Intolerance Selfishness Sometimes
To conjure with the passive culture and adapt to its rules is to degrade and deny the fullness of our meaning and intention.

ADRIENNE RICH

To conjure with the passive culture and adapt to its rules is to degrade and deny the fullness of our meaning and intention.
ADRIENNE RICH

Cultural Degrade Fullness Intention Meaning Passive
Experience is always larger than language.
ADRIENNE RICH

Language Larger
It’s exhilarating to be alive in a time of awakening consciousness; it can also be confusing, disorienting, and painful.
ADRIENNE RICH

Awakening Confusing Consciousness Disorienting Exhilarating Painful
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

Disequilibrium Moment Psychic
The liar often suffers from amnesia. Amnesia is the silence of the unconscious.

ADRIENNE RICH

The liar often suffers from amnesia. Amnesia is the silence of the unconscious.
ADRIENNE RICH

Amnesia Suffer Unconscious
For now, poetry has the capacity – in its own ways and by its own means – to remind us of something we are forbidden to see.

ADRIENNE RICH

For now, poetry has the capacity – in its own ways and by its own means – to remind us of something we are forbidden to see.
ADRIENNE RICH

Mean Something Trying Way
It is important to do this because it breaks down human self-delusion and isolation. It is important to do this because in doing so we do justice to our own complexity.

ADRIENNE RICH

It is important to do this because it breaks down human self-delusion and isolation. It is important to do this because in doing so we do justice to our own complexity.
ADRIENNE RICH

Isolation

I’ve known great happiness in my life along with great darkness, and a question that has repeatedly entered my poetry has been, how do we use the direct experience of happiness that may be given us.

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