black
grey
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When I talk of taking a trip I mean forever.

Adrienne Rich

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

Cloning Laboratories Live Nuclear Pipeline Power Radioactivity Real Street Switchboard Telephone
I am the androgyne, I am the living mind you fail to describe in your dead language the lost noun, the verb surviving only in the infinitive the letters of my name are written under the lids of the newborn child
ADRIENNE RICH

Androgyne Child Children Dead Describe Infinite Language Living Lost Mind Name Newborn Noun Surviving Verb
In this disintegrative, technologically-manic time, when public language is so debased, poetry continues to matter because it’s the art that reintegrates words, speech, voice, breath, music, bodily tempo, and the powers of the imagination.
ADRIENNE RICH

Art Breath Continue Debased Disintegrative Imagination Language Manic Matter Music Poetry Public Reintegrates Speech Technologically Time Voice
It is the thirtieth of May, the thirtieth of November, a beginning or an end, we are moving into the solstice and there is so much here I still do not understand.
ADRIENNE RICH

Beginning End May Moving November Solistice
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
What kind of beast would turn its life into words?
ADRIENNE RICH

Beast Kind Life Turn
We might possess every technological resource… but if our language is inadequate, our vision remains formless.
ADRIENNE RICH

formless Inadequate Language Posses Remain Resource Romance Running Technological Thinking
The mind’s passion is all for singling out. Obscurity has another tale to tell.
ADRIENNE RICH

Another Mind Obscurity Passion Singling Tale
If we had time and no money, living by our wits, what story would you tell?
ADRIENNE RICH

Living Money No Stories Tell Wit
I am uncomfortable with talking of poetry as a priestly profession, because I have little use for organized religions and priestly hierarchies. They have demoralized, persecuted, so many, including women, gays, non-believers.
ADRIENNE RICH

Gay Organized Poetry Priestly Profession Religion Talking Uncomfortable Use
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
It is the lesbian in us who is creative, for the dutiful daughter of the fathers in us is only a hack.
ADRIENNE RICH

Creativity Daughter Father Hack Lesbian
We may feel bitterly how little our poems can do in the face of seemingly out-of-control technological power and seemingly limitless corporate greed, yet it has always been true that poetry can break isolation.
ADRIENNE RICH

Control Greed Little May Poem Power Technological
It is important to possess a short-term pessimism and a long-term optimism.
ADRIENNE RICH

Important Long Optimism Pessimism Possess Term
What we see, we see and seeing is changing
ADRIENNE RICH

Changing See Seeing
The revolution of a wheel which returns in the end to the same place; the revolving door of a politics which has liberated women only to use them, and only within the limits of male tolerance.
ADRIENNE RICH

Door Limit Male Politics Return Revolution Same Tolerance

When I talk of taking a trip I mean forever.

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When I talk of taking a trip I mean forever.

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