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A knowledge that is subliminal, subversive, preverbal: the knowledge flowing between two alike bodies, one of which has spent nine months inside the other.

Adrienne Rich

Language is power… Language can be used as a means of changing reality.
ADRIENNE RICH

Changing Language Mean Reality Writing
It’s as if, in the mother’s eyes, her smile, her stroking touch, the child first reads the message:’You are there!’
ADRIENNE RICH

Children Day Eye Message Mothers Smile Stroking Read Touch
A withdrawal from thinking in terms of social and collective values, needs and solutions. The consciousness-raising groups of the women’s movement, for instance, becoming “support-groups” or therapy groups.
ADRIENNE RICH

Collective Consciousness Need Solution Support Value Withdrawal
In a world where language and naming are power, silence is oppression, is violence.
ADRIENNE RICH

Language Naming Oppression Power Silence Violence World
I don’t want to succumb to the idea that for the generation, or generations, raised on television, the text is irrelevant or so intimidating that they won’t deal with it.
ADRIENNE RICH

Generation Idea Irrelevant Raised Succumb Tech Television
No woman is really an insider in the institutions fathered by masculine consciousness. When we allow ourselves to believe we are.
ADRIENNE RICH

Believe Consciousness Fathered Insider Inspiring Institution Masculine Really War Woman
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
Spaces within a line, double colons, slashes, are indications of pause, of breath, of urgency, they are not metrically exact as in a musical notation but they serve (I hope) to make the reader think about the sound of the poem.
ADRIENNE RICH

Breath Colon Double Indication Metrically Musical Notation Pause Slash Sound Space Urgency
You must write, and read, as if your life depended on it.
ADRIENNE RICH

Depended Life Must Read Writing
The necessity of poetry has to be stated over and over, but only to those who have reason to fear its power.
ADRIENNE RICH

Believe Fear Necessity Poetry Power Reason Trying
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
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
It is part of our refusal of the self-destructiveness of male-dominated society.
ADRIENNE RICH

Destructiveness Dominated Male Refusal Self Society
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
[The poet] is endowed to speak for those who do not have the gift of language, or to see for those who – for whatever reasons – are less conscious of what they are living through.
ADRIENNE RICH

Endowed Gift Language Reason Risk Speak Survival Use
“What do we want from each other/ after we have told our stories?” Where do we go to explore our stake with others in such a society?
ADRIENNE RICH

Each Explore Other Society Stake Stories Want

A knowledge that is subliminal, subversive, preverbal: the knowledge flowing between two alike bodies, one of which has spent nine months inside the other.

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A knowledge that is subliminal, subversive, preverbal: the knowledge flowing between two alike bodies, one of which has spent nine months inside the other.

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