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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

I think many poets, including myself, write both for the voice and for the page. I certainly write for the person alone in the library, who pulls down a book and it opens to a poem. I am also very conscious of what it means to read these poems aloud.
ADRIENNE RICH

Alone Book Both Certainly Conscious Library Mean Page Person Poem Poet Voice Writing
Can individual psychic wounds really heal in an abusive and fragmented society? Audre Lorde has a poem which begins,
ADRIENNE RICH

Abusive Begin Heal Individual Psychic Society Stories Want
Not biology, but ignorance of ourselves, has been the key to our powerlessness
ADRIENNE RICH

Biology Ignorance Key Ourselves Powerlessness
It is important to possess a short-term pessimism and a long-term optimism.
ADRIENNE RICH

Important Long Optimism Pessimism Possess Term
The liar leads an existence of unutterable loneliness.
ADRIENNE RICH

Existence Liar Loneliness Lying Unutterable
Art, whose honesty must work through artifice, cannot avoid cheating truth.
ADRIENNE RICH

Art Artifice Cheating Honesty Truth
The beauty of darkness is how it lets you see.
ADRIENNE RICH

Beauty Darkness Let See
It can speak to people who have themselves felt like monsters and say: you are not alone, this is not monstrous. It can disturb and enrapture.
ADRIENNE RICH

Alone Disturb Enrapture Monster Monstrous People Speak Themselves
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
There is the falsely mystical view of art that assumes a kind of supernatural inspiration, a possession by universal forces unrelated to questions of power and privilege or the artist’s relation to bread and blood. In this view.
ADRIENNE RICH

Art Assume Blood Falsely Force Inspiration Possession Question Relation Song Supernatural Universal
What I believe in and what my government represents are not the same thing.
ADRIENNE RICH

Believe Government Represent Same Thing
And perhaps there is none now; but we will have to make it, we who want an end to suffering, who want to change the laws of history, if we are not to give ourselves away.
ADRIENNE RICH

Change History Make Perhaps Suffering
There’s been real hostility toward political poetry in the U.S., hostility or, at best, incomprehension. I’m speaking of those who have institutional power over what gets published, over grants andprizes and reviewing.
ADRIENNE RICH

Country Incomprehension Institution Male Political Power Real Speaking
I touch you knowing we weren’t born tomorrow, and somehow, each of us will help the other live, and somewhere, each of us must help the other die.
ADRIENNE RICH

Born Each Help Helping Knowing Live Somehow Somewhere Tomorrow
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
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

Language is as real, as tangible, in our lives as streets, pipelines, telephone switchboards, microwaves, radioactivity, cloning laboratories, nuclear power stations.

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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.

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Popular Authors

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