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Motherhood is the great mesh in which all human relations are entangled, in which lurk our most elemental assumptions about love and power.

Adrienne Rich

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
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
All new learning looks at first like chaos.
ADRIENNE RICH

Chaos First Learning Look New
To read as if your life depended on it would mean to let into your reading your beliefs, the swirl of your dreamlife, the physical sensations of your ordinary carnal life; and simultaneously.
ADRIENNE RICH

Belief Depended Dreamlife Intelligent Mean Multiple Choice Physical Reading Sensation Swirl
I’ve known great happiness in my life along with great darkness, and a question that has repeatedly entered my poetry has been, how do we use the direct experience of happiness that may be given us.
ADRIENNE RICH

Along Creativity Darkness Entered Experience Given Happiness Life Poetry Repeatedly Use
It’s as if, in the mother’s eyes, her smile, her stroking touch, the child first reads the message:’You are there!’
ADRIENNE RICH

Children Day Eye Message Mothers Smile Stroking Read Touch
If I cling to circumstances I could feel not responsible. Only she who says she did not choose, is the loser in the end.
ADRIENNE RICH

Choose Circumstance End Feel Loser Responsible
I am an instrument in the shape/ of a woman trying to translate pulsations/ into images for the relief of the body/ and the reconstruction of the mind.
ADRIENNE RICH

Body Instrument Mind relief Shape Trying
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

Aquariums Bodies Bring Essential Human Mean More Repossession Seizing Society Women
To become a token woman – whether you win the Nobel Prize or merely get tenure at the cost of denying your sisters – is to become something less than a man.
ADRIENNE RICH

Brotherhood Denying Law Less Man Nobel Prize Self Sister tenure Winning Woman
My children cause me the most exquisite suffering of which I have any experience. It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness.
ADRIENNE RICH

Children Experience Exquisite Feeling Most Suffering
A thinking woman sleeps with monsters.
ADRIENNE RICH

Monster Sleep Think Thinking Woman
The liar often suffers from amnesia. Amnesia is the silence of the unconscious.
ADRIENNE RICH

Amnesia Liar Lying Silence Suffer Unconscious
Freud rediscovered the underworld of consciousness that European rationalism had denied. But when you have a nation of people in therapy and counselling.
ADRIENNE RICH

Consciousness Country Denied Nation People Rationalism Rediscovered Therapy Underworld
When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart.
ADRIENNE RICH

Around Block Building Collapse Landscape Memories Notebook Prayer
Much male fear of feminism is infantilism–the longing to remain the mother’s son, to possess a woman who exists purely for him.
ADRIENNE RICH

Exist Fear Feminism Infantilism Longing Male Mother Much Purely Remain Son

Motherhood is the great mesh in which all human relations are entangled, in which lurk our most elemental assumptions about love and power.

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Motherhood is the great mesh in which all human relations are entangled, in which lurk our most elemental assumptions about love and power.

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Popular Authors

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