black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

Despair, when not the response to absolute physical and moral defeat is, like war, the failure of imagination.

Adrienne Rich

Poems are like dreams: in them you put what you don’t know you know.
ADRIENNE RICH

Dream Know Like Poem Put
Life on the planet is born of woman.
ADRIENNE RICH

Born Inspirational Life Planet Rich Life
It will take all your heart, it will take all your breath It will be short, it will not be simple
ADRIENNE RICH

Breath Heart Short Simple Take
I guess what concerns me always is the need for a field, a rich compost, for any art to flourish. But however isolate or unheard you may feel, if you have the need to write poetry, are compelled to write it, you go on, whether there is resonance or not.
ADRIENNE RICH

Art Compost Concern Feel Field Flourish Guess Isolate Need Rich Unheard Writing
What we see, we see and seeing is changing
ADRIENNE RICH

Changing See Seeing
I define “politics” as the on-going collective struggle for liberation and for the power to create – not only works of art, but also just and nonviolent social institutions.
ADRIENNE RICH

Art Collective Create Liberation Nonviolent Politics Power Social Struggle Work
Heterosexuality has been forcibly and subliminally imposed on women. Yet everywhere women have resisted it, often at the cost of physical torture, imprisonment, psychosurgery, social ostracism, and extreme poverty.
ADRIENNE RICH

Cost Forcibly Heterosexuality Imposed Poverty Subliminally Woman
A president cannot meaningfully honor certain token artists while the people at large are so dishonored.’”
ADRIENNE RICH

Artist Dishonoured Honor Legal People President
It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness
ADRIENNE RICH

Ambivalence Blissful Gratification Murderous Nerves Resentment Suffering
The dialectic between change and continuity is a painful but deeply instructive one, in personal life as in the life of a people.
ADRIENNE RICH

Change Continuity Dialectric Instructive Life Light People Personal
The decision to feed the world is the real decision. No revolution has chosen it. For that choice requires that women shall be free.
ADRIENNE RICH

Choices Chosen Decision Real Require Revolution Woman
When we look closely, or when we become weavers, we learn of the tiny multiple threads unseen in the overall pattern, the knots on the underside of the carpet
ADRIENNE RICH

Carpet Closely Look Multiple Threads Tiny Underside Unseen Weaver
There is no ‘the truth’,’a truth’ – truth is not one thing, or even a system. It is an increasing complexity. the pattern of the carpet is a surface.
ADRIENNE RICH

Carpet Complexity Incraeding Look Pattern Surface System Truth Unseen
If you are trying to transform a brutalized society into one where people can live in dignity and hope, you begin with the empowering of the most powerless. You build from the ground up.
ADRIENNE RICH

Begin Brutalized Dignity Empowering Hope People Powerless Society Transform Trying
“Support” groups for every kind of human condition, where, in the clichés of that milieu, people “share” and “heal,” the question, “What for?”, “What now?” is no longer asked.
ADRIENNE RICH

Asked Clinch Condition Group Heal Human Kind Longer Milieu Support
I began to feel heard in that movement. But it was because my voice was resonating with other voices.
ADRIENNE RICH

Began Feel Heard Movement Resonating Voice

Despair, when not the response to absolute physical and moral defeat is, like war, the failure of imagination.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

Despair, when not the response to absolute physical and moral defeat is, like war, the failure of imagination.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Adrienne Rich Quotes