When my dreams showed signs of becoming politically correct no unruly images escaping beyond borders … then I began to wonder
ADRIENNE RICHI do not think [poetry] is more, or less, necessary than food, shelter, health, education, decent working conditions. It is as necessary.
More Adrienne Rich Quotes
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It’s exhilarating to be alive in a time of awakening consciousness; it can also be confusing, disorienting, and painful.
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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.
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The revolution of a wheel which returns in the end to the same place; the revolving door of a politics which has liberated women only to use them, and only within the limits of male tolerance.
ADRIENNE RICH -
A president cannot meaningfully honor certain token artists while the people at large are so dishonored.’”
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… this world gives no room to be what we dreamt of being
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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 -
Spaces within a line, double colons, slashes, are indications of pause, of breath, of urgency, they are not metrically exact as in a musical notation but they serve (I hope) to make the reader think about the sound of the poem.
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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.
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Lying is done with words and also with silence.
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To “see the light” too often has meant rejecting the treasures found in darkness.
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I’d call it love if love didn’t take so many years but lust too is a jewel.
ADRIENNE RICH -
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 -
Poetry is the liquid voice that can wear through stone.
ADRIENNE RICH -
A decade of cutting away dead flesh, cauterizing old scars ripped open over and over and still it is not enough.
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The serious revolutionary, like the serious artist, can’t afford to lead a sentimental or self-deceiving life.
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Those who speak largely of the human condition are usually those most exempt from its oppressions – whether of sex, race, or servitude.
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It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness
ADRIENNE RICH -
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.
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The moment of change is the only poem.
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No one has imagined us. We want to live like trees, sycamores blazing through the sulfuric air, dappled with scars, still exuberantly budding, our animal passion rooted in the city.
ADRIENNE RICH -
The repossession by women of our bodies will bring far more essential change to human society than the seizing of the means of production by workers.
ADRIENNE RICH -
There being no shared daily life what with migrations, exiles, diasporas, rendings, the search for work. Or there is a shared daily life riddled with holes of silence
ADRIENNE RICH -
Young people know they are being betrayed by he mass electronic media. It caricatures them, caricatures others.
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If I cling to circumstances I could feel not responsible. Only she who says she did not choose, is the loser in the end.
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I don’t think we can separate art from overall human dignity and hope.
ADRIENNE RICH -
The materials are here for the deepest mutuality and the most painful estrangement.
ADRIENNE RICH