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 RICHIt is important to do this because we can count on so few people to go that hard way with us.
More Adrienne Rich Quotes
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Since we’re not young, weeks have to do time for years of missing each other.Yet only this odd warp in time tells me we’re not young.
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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.
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The [Vietnam War Memorial] Wall became a magnet for citizens of every generation, class, race, and relationship to the war perhaps because it is the only great public monument that allows the anesthetized holes in the heart to fill with a truly national grief.
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The so-called multiple-choice examination sheet with the number 2 pencil to mark one choice and one choice only?
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What kind of beast would turn its life into words?
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Language is as real, as tangible, in our lives as streets, pipelines, telephone switchboards, microwaves, radioactivity, cloning laboratories, nuclear power stations.
ADRIENNE RICH -
It will take all your heart, it will take all your breath It will be short, it will not be simple
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I don’t trust them but I’m learning to use them.
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To work and suffer is to be at home. All else is scenery.
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if we are unaware that women even have a history–we live our lives similarly unanchored, drifting in response to a veering wind of myth and bias.
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Only where there is language is there world.
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It’s exhilarating to be alive in a time of awakening consciousness; it can also be confusing, disorienting, and painful.
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I feel more helpless with you than without you.
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If you teach, you see this is not true. It may be that newer generations do not worship the text as some of their elders do.
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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