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There being no shared daily life what with migrations, exiles, diasporas, rendings, the search for work. Or there is a shared daily life riddled with holes of silence

Adrienne Rich

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
Sleeping. Turning in turn like planets rotating in their midnight meadow: a touch is enough to let us know we’re not alone in the universe, even in sleep.
ADRIENNE RICH

Alone Enough Meadow Midnight Planet Rotating Sleep Sleeping Touch Turning
What kind of beast would turn its life into words?
ADRIENNE RICH

Beast Kind Life Turn
We lose touch with parts of ourselves defined as unacceptable by that consciousness; with the vital toughness and visionary strength of the angry grandmothers, the fierce market women of the Ibo’s Women’s War.
ADRIENNE RICH

Consciousness Grandmother Market Ourselves Toughness Unacceptable Women
There is nothing revolutionary whatsoever about the control of women’s bodies by men.
ADRIENNE RICH

Body Control Man Nothing Revolutionary Women
The decision to feed the world is the real decision. No revolution has chosen it. For that choice requires that women shall be free.
ADRIENNE RICH

Choices Chosen Decision Real Require Revolution Woman
Probably there is nothing in human nature more resonant with charges than the flow of energy between two biologically alike bodies, one of which has lain in amniotic bliss inside the other, one of which has labored to give birth to the other.
ADRIENNE RICH

Alike Biological Bodies Charges Energy Giving Human Nature Nothing Probably Resonant Two
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
Women have always been seen as waiting: waited to be asked, waiting for our menses, in fear lest they do or do not come, waiting for men to come home from wars, or from work.
ADRIENNE RICH

Always Asked Children Come Fear Growing Lest Menses Up Waited Waiting War Women
We who were loved will never unlive that crippling fever.
ADRIENNE RICH

Crippling Fever Love Loved Unlive
If you are trying to transform a brutalized society into one where people can live in dignity and hope, you begin with the empowering of the most powerless. You build from the ground up.
ADRIENNE RICH

Begin Brutalized Dignity Empowering Hope People Powerless Society Transform Trying
Art and literature have given so many people the relief of feeling connected – pulled us out of isolation. It has let us know that somebody else breathed and dreamed and had sex and loved and raged and knew loneliness the way we do.
ADRIENNE RICH

Art Connected Isolation Literature Loneliness People Sex
When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart.
ADRIENNE RICH

Around Block Building Collapse Landscape Memories Notebook Prayer
It is important to do this because it breaks down human self-delusion and isolation. It is important to do this because in doing so we do justice to our own complexity.
ADRIENNE RICH

Break Human Important Isolation Justice
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
I am always interested in the ways of scoring the sound of the poem, especially a poem with long lines.
ADRIENNE RICH

Bridges Especially Interested Line Long Poem Scoring Space Thinking

There being no shared daily life what with migrations, exiles, diasporas, rendings, the search for work. Or there is a shared daily life riddled with holes of silence

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There being no shared daily life what with migrations, exiles, diasporas, rendings, the search for work. Or there is a shared daily life riddled with holes of silence

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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