black
grey
blue
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I don’t trust them but I’m learning to use them.

Adrienne Rich

Poetry is above all a concentration of the power of language, which is the power of our ultimate relationship to everything in the universe.
ADRIENNE RICH

Concentration Language ower Poetry Power Relationship Ultimate Universe
I cannot speak for you. Two thoughts: there is no liberation that only knows how to say ‘I’; there is no collective movement that speaks for each of us all the way through.
ADRIENNE RICH

Collective Know Liberation Movement Say Speak Thought
Despair, when not the response to absolute physical and moral defeat is, like war, the failure of imagination.
ADRIENNE RICH

Absolute Confusion Defeat Despair Failure Imagination Physical Response War
The liar often suffers from amnesia. Amnesia is the silence of the unconscious.
ADRIENNE RICH

Amnesia Liar Lying Silence Suffer Unconscious
What would it mean to live in a city whose people were changing each other’s despair into hope?– You yourself must change it.
ADRIENNE RICH

Change Changing Cities Despair Hope Mean
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
In such a world women will truly create new life, bringing forth not only children if and as we choose but the visions, and the thinking, necessary to sustain, console and alter human existence-a new relationship to the universe.
ADRIENNE RICH

Bringing Console Create Sustain Vision Woman
I am a woman in the prime of my life, with certain powers and those powers severely limited by authorities whose faces I rarely see.
ADRIENNE RICH

Authorities Authority Certain Face Life Power Prime Rarely Woman
As a society in turmoil, we are going to see more, and more various, attempts to simulate order through repression; and art is a historical target for such efforts.
ADRIENNE RICH

Art Effort Going Historical More Order Repression Simulate Society Target Turmoil Various
TV has created a kind of false collectivity.
ADRIENNE RICH

Collectively Created False Kind Television
The words are purposes./The words are maps./I came to see the damage that was done/and the treasures that prevail.
ADRIENNE RICH

Damage Done Map Prevail Purpose Treasure Word
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
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.
ADRIENNE RICH

Since Time Week Wrap Years Missing Young
For now, poetry has the capacity – in its own ways and by its own means – to remind us of something we are forbidden to see.
ADRIENNE RICH

Capacity Forbidden Mean Remind Something Trying Way Woman
The channel of art can only become clogged and misdirected by the artist’s concern with merely temporary and local disturbances. The song is higher than the struggle.
ADRIENNE RICH

Art Artist Channel Clogged Concern Song Struggle Woman
All new learning looks at first like chaos.
ADRIENNE RICH

Chaos First Learning Look New

I don’t trust them but I’m learning to use them.

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I don’t trust them but I’m learning to use them.

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