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The marriage-resisting women silk workers of pre-Revolutionary China, the millions of widows, midwives, and the women healers tortured and burned as witches for three centuries in Europe.

Adrienne Rich

Sexuality, politics, intelligence, power, motherhood, work, community, intimacy will develop new meanings; thinking itself will be transformed. This is where we have to begin.
ADRIENNE RICH

Community Intelligence Intimacy Motherhood Power Thinking Transformed
Made difficult-to-come-by, whatever is buried in the memory by the collapse of meaning under an inadequate or lying language – this will become, not merely unspoken, but unspeakable.
ADRIENNE RICH

Buried Collapse Difficult Inadequate Memory Merely Unspeakable Unspoken
In the States, there has been, compared to the Sixties and Seventies, a huge retrenchment – not just in poetry – into the personal.
ADRIENNE RICH

Compared Country Need Personal Poetry Retrenchment Support Thinking
They can rule the world while they can persuade us our pain belongs in some order is death by famine worse than death by suicide, than a life of famine and suicide…?
ADRIENNE RICH

Belong Death Famine Pain Persuade Suicide Wose
A decade of cutting away dead flesh, cauterizing old scars ripped open over and over and still it is not enough.
ADRIENNE RICH

Cutting Enough Flesh Open Ripped Scar
Whether of love and sexuality or creativity or the sense of connectedness with other beings, human and otherwise?
ADRIENNE RICH

Connectedness Creativity Human Love Sense Sexually
And perhaps there is none now; but we will have to make it, we who want an end to suffering, who want to change the laws of history, if we are not to give ourselves away.
ADRIENNE RICH

Change History Make Perhaps Suffering
We assume that politicians are without honor. We read their statements trying to crack the code. The scandals of their politics: not so much that men in high places lie, only that they do so with such indifference.
ADRIENNE RICH

Code Crack Honor Lie Lying Men Place Political Politician Politics Scandal Statement
Re-vision – the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction – is for woman more than a chapter in cultural history: it is an act of survival.
ADRIENNE RICH

Act Back Chapter Critical Cultural Direction Entering Eye Eyes Fresh History Looking More Self Survival Test Woman
The mother’s battle for her child with sickness, with poverty, with war, with all the forces of exploitation and callousness that cheapen human life needs to become a common human battle, waged in love and in the passion for survival.
ADRIENNE RICH

Batter Callousness Child Children Exploitation Force Mother Poverty Sickness War
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
I don’t want to succumb to the idea that for the generation, or generations, raised on television, the text is irrelevant or so intimidating that they won’t deal with it.
ADRIENNE RICH

Generation Idea Irrelevant Raised Succumb Tech Television
If we had time and no money, living by our wits, what story would you tell?
ADRIENNE RICH

Living Money No Stories Tell Wit
The liar leads an existence of unutterable loneliness.
ADRIENNE RICH

Existence Liar Loneliness Lying Unutterable
Despair, when not the response to absolute physical and moral defeat is, like war, the failure of imagination.
ADRIENNE RICH

Absolute Confusion Defeat Despair Failure Imagination Physical Response War
We can count on so few people to go that hard way with us.
ADRIENNE RICH

Count Few Hard People Way

The marriage-resisting women silk workers of pre-Revolutionary China, the millions of widows, midwives, and the women healers tortured and burned as witches for three centuries in Europe.

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The marriage-resisting women silk workers of pre-Revolutionary China, the millions of widows, midwives, and the women healers tortured and burned as witches for three centuries in Europe.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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