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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.

Adrienne Rich

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

Believe Fear Necessity Poetry Power Reason Trying
The more I live, the more I think, two people together is a miracle.
ADRIENNE RICH

Miracle More People Thinking Together Two
I think my work comes out of both an intense desire for connection and what it means to feel isolated. There’s always going to be a kind of tidal movement back and forth between the two.
ADRIENNE RICH

Connection Going Isolated Kind Mean Movement Thinking Two
I choose to love this time for once with all my intelligence -from “Splittings
ADRIENNE RICH

Choose Intelligence Love Splitting Time
Show us to ourselves when we are outlawed or made invisible, remind us of beauty where no beauty seems possible, remind us of kinship where all is represented as separation.
ADRIENNE RICH

Beauty Invisible Made Outlawed Possible Remind Represented Seem Separation Show
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
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
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
Until we know the assumptions in which we are drenched, we cannot know ourselves.
ADRIENNE RICH

Assumption Drenched Know Ourselves Until
The materials are here for the deepest mutuality and the most painful estrangement.
ADRIENNE RICH

Deepest Estrangement Material Most Mutuality Painful
The suppressed lesbian I had been carrying in me since adolescence began to stretch her limbs.
ADRIENNE RICH

Adolescence Carrying Lesbian Limb Sexuality Stretch
A life I didn’t choose chose me: even my tools are the wrong ones for what I have to do.
ADRIENNE RICH

Choose Even Life One Tool Wrong
You have to be free to play around with the notion that day might be night, love might be hate; nothing can be too sacred for the imagination to turn into its opposite or to call experimentally by another name. For writing is re-naming.
ADRIENNE RICH

Free Hate Night Nothing Notion Play Sacred Writing
I keep coming back to you in my head, but you couldn’t know that, and I have no carbons.
ADRIENNE RICH

Back Carbon Coming Head Keep Know
[The poet] is endowed to speak for those who do not have the gift of language, or to see for those who – for whatever reasons – are less conscious of what they are living through.
ADRIENNE RICH

Endowed Gift Language Reason Risk Speak Survival Use
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

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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Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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