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We have no familiar, ready-made name for a woman who defines herself, by choice, neither in relation to children nor to men, who is self-identified, who has chosen herself.

Adrienne Rich

Even the most angry, even the darkest, even the most grief-stricken, and even the most embittered art has that element somewhere behind it. Because how could you be so despairing, so embittered, if you had not had something you loved that you lost?
ADRIENNE RICH

Angry Darkest Embittered Grief Most Stricken
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
Can you remember? when we thought the poets taught how to live?
ADRIENNE RICH

Life Live Poet Poetry Remember Taught
The serious revolutionary, like the serious artist, can’t afford to lead a sentimental or self-deceiving life.
ADRIENNE RICH

Afford Artist Deceiving Self Sentimental Serious
Our personalities seem dangerously to blur and overlap with our mother’s; and, in a desperate attempt to know where mother ends and daughter begins, we perform radical surgery.
ADRIENNE RICH

Attempt Correspond Dangerously Daughter Mother Personalities Personality
We have lived with violence far too long.
ADRIENNE RICH

Lived Long Violence
In a society where some people are far more educated than others, in which public education is ill-funded – here I am speaking of the U.S. – while we build more and more prisons to incarcerate youth who ought to be in school.
ADRIENNE RICH

Believe Country Educated Education Educational Funded People Public School Society Some Speaking
In the States, there has been, compared to the Sixties and Seventies, a huge retrenchment – not just in poetry – into the personal.
ADRIENNE RICH

Compared Country Need Personal Poetry Retrenchment Support Thinking
An honorable human relationship- that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word “love”- 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 Love People Process Relationship Self Truth Two Violent
But before we were mothers, we have been, first of all, women, with actual bodies and actual minds.
ADRIENNE RICH

Bodies Body Mind Mother Women
A language is a map of our failures.
ADRIENNE RICH

Failure Language Map
If, as women, we accept a philosophy of history that asserts that women are by definition assimilated into the male universal,that we can understand our past through a male lens.
ADRIENNE RICH

Accept Assert Assimilated Definition History Male Past Philosophy Universe Wind Women
There is no simple formula for the relationship of art to justice…In the end, I don’t think we can separate art from overall human dignity and hope. My concern for my country is inextricable from my concerns as an artist.
ADRIENNE RICH

Art Country Formula Human Justice m Relationship Overall Separate Simple Think
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 marriage-resisting women silk workers of pre-Revolutionary China, the millions of widows, midwives, and the women healers tortured and burned as witches for three centuries in Europe.
ADRIENNE RICH

Centuries Country Marriage Revolution Witch Worker
Writers matter in a society to the extent that we can help that society hear its unvoiced longing, encounter its erased and disregarded selves, break with complacency, numbness, despair.
ADRIENNE RICH

Complacency Despair Disregarded Encounter Erased Extent Hear Help Matter Numbness Self Selves Society Unvoiced

We have no familiar, ready-made name for a woman who defines herself, by choice, neither in relation to children nor to men, who is self-identified, who has chosen herself.

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We have no familiar, ready-made name for a woman who defines herself, by choice, neither in relation to children nor to men, who is self-identified, who has chosen herself.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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