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The necessity of poetry has to be stated over and over, but only to those who have reason to fear its power.

Adrienne Rich

In [family snapshots] the flow of profane time has been stopped and a sacred interval of self-conscious revelation has been cut from it by the edge of the picture frame and the light of the sun or the flash.
ADRIENNE RICH

Conscious Cutting Interval Light Profane Revelation Self Stopped Time
Every journey into the past is complicated by delusions, false memories, false namings of real events.
ADRIENNE RICH

Complicated Delusion Fake False Journey Memories Naming Past People Real
Much male fear of feminism is the fear that, in becoming whole human beings, women will cease to mother men, to provide the breast, the lullaby, the continuous attention associated by the infant with the mother.
ADRIENNE RICH

Becoming Being Breast Cease Fear Feminism Human Male Man Mother Provide Son Women
When someone, let’s say a teacher, speaks of the world and you are not in it, it’s like looking into the mirror and seeing nothing.
ADRIENNE RICH

Looking Mirror Nothing Someone Speak Teacher World
What we see, we see and seeing is changing
ADRIENNE RICH

Changing See Seeing
An honorable human relationship … is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other.
ADRIENNE RICH

Delicate Honorable Human Involved Person Process Relationship Terrifying Truth Violent
We must use what we have to invent what we desire.
ADRIENNE RICH

Desire Dream Invent Lose Success Use
There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep, and still be counted as warriors. (I make up this strange, angry packet for you, threaded with love.) I think you thought there was no such place for you, and perhaps there was none then.
ADRIENNE RICH

Among Counted Down Must None Perhaps Sit Weep
The assumption that women are a subgroup, that men’s culture is the ‘real’ world, that patriarchy is equivalent to culture and culture to patriarchy, that the ‘great’ or ‘liberalizing’ periods of history have been the same for women as for men.
ADRIENNE RICH

Assumption Culture Men Patriarchy Real Subgroup Women World
What it is like to live in another skin, what it is like to live in another body, and in that sense to surpass ourselves, to go out beyond ourselves.
ADRIENNE RICH

Another Body Live Ourselves Sense Skin Surpass
I cannot speak for you. Two thoughts: there is no liberation that only knows how to say ‘I’; there is no collective movement that speaks for each of us all the way through.
ADRIENNE RICH

Collective Know Liberation Movement Say Speak Thought
I’d call it love if love didn’t take so many years but lust too is a jewel.
ADRIENNE RICH

Call Jewels Love Sex Tale Year
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
The liar often suffers from amnesia. Amnesia is the silence of the unconscious.
ADRIENNE RICH

Amnesia Liar Lying Silence Suffer Unconscious
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 kind of poetry that interests me is intellectual and moral and political and sexual and sensual – all of that fermenting together.
ADRIENNE RICH

Fermenting Intellectual Interest Kind Moral People Poetry Political Sensual Sexual Together

The necessity of poetry has to be stated over and over, but only to those who have reason to fear its power.

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The necessity of poetry has to be stated over and over, but only to those who have reason to fear its power.

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