black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

To “see the light” too often has meant rejecting the treasures found in darkness.

Adrienne Rich

You have to be free to play around with the notion that day might be night, love might be hate; nothing can be too sacred for the imagination to turn into its opposite or to call experimentally by another name. For writing is re-naming.
ADRIENNE RICH

Free Hate Night Nothing Notion Play Sacred Writing
In order to live a fully human life we require not only control of our bodies (though control is a prerequisite); we must touch the unity and resonance of our physicality, our bond with the natural order, the corporeal grounds of our intelligence.
ADRIENNE RICH

Bodies Body Control Fully Human Intelligence Life Natural Order Physical Unity
Lying is done with words and also with silence.
ADRIENNE RICH

Integrity Liar Silence Truth Word
The unconscious wants truth, as the body does. The complexity and fecundity of dreams come from the complexity and fecundity of the unconscious struggling to fulfill that desire. The complexity and fecundity of poetry come from the same struggle.
ADRIENNE RICH

Body Complexity Desire Dream Fecundity Struggle Struggling Truth Unconcious
What I’m finding is that in our increasingly dysfunctional U.S. society, marvelous poetry is being written – out of and amid the dysfunction.
ADRIENNE RICH

Amid Country Dysfunction Finding Increasing Society
That a war can be represented as helping a people to ‘feel good’ about themselves, or their country, is a measure of that failure.
ADRIENNE RICH

Country Failure Feel Good Helping Measure Represented Themselves War
You must write, and read, as if your life depended on it.
ADRIENNE RICH

Depended Life Must Read Writing
I don’t trust them but I’m learning to use them.
ADRIENNE RICH

Don't Learning Trust Use
The dialectic between change and continuity is a painful but deeply instructive one, in personal life as in the life of a people.
ADRIENNE RICH

Change Continuity Dialectric Instructive Life Light People Personal
I think about the possibilities for empathy, for mutual solidarity among gay men and lesbians, not simply as people who suffer under homophobia, but as people who are also extremely creative, active, and have a particular understanding of the human condition.
ADRIENNE RICH

Gay Lesbian Men People Possibilities Solidarity Suffer Thinking
Passion for survival is the great theme of women’s poetry.
ADRIENNE RICH

Great Passion Poetry Survival Theme Women
It is important to do this because we can count on so few people to go that hard way with us.
ADRIENNE RICH

Count Few Hard Important People Way
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
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

Being Daily Exile Migration Rending Riddled Search Shared Silence Work
It’s been associated with the power of the word, with the sacred, with magic and transformation, with the oral narratives that help a people cohere.
ADRIENNE RICH

Choice People Power Sacred Transformation
Most of them, though not all, arewhite and male. But even as American society is unravelling, becoming more violent and punitive, wonderful political poetshave been emerging.
ADRIENNE RICH

Country Poets have Unravelling Violent Wonderful

To “see the light” too often has meant rejecting the treasures found in darkness.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

To “see the light” too often has meant rejecting the treasures found in darkness.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Adrienne Rich Quotes