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There is the falsely mystical view of art that assumes a kind of supernatural inspiration, a possession by universal forces unrelated to questions of power and privilege or the artist’s relation to bread and blood. In this view.

Adrienne Rich

A huge breast, an avid cave; between her legs snakes, swamp-grass, or teeth; on her lap a helpless infant or a martyred son. She exists for one purpose: to bear and nourish the son.
ADRIENNE RICH

Avid Breast Cave Exist Grass Helpless Huge Leg Martyred Purpose Snake Son Swamp Teeth
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
Re-vision – the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction – is for woman more than a chapter in cultural history: it is an act of survival.
ADRIENNE RICH

Act Back Chapter Critical Cultural Direction Entering Eye Eyes Fresh History Looking More Self Survival Test Woman
Sexist grammar burns into the brains of little girls and young women a message that the male is the norm, the standard, the central figure beside which we are all deviants.
ADRIENNE RICH

Brain Burn Deviant Girl Grammar Men Message Norm Standard Thinking Young
Poetry can add its grain to an accumulation of consciousness against the idea that there is no alternative – that we’re just in the great flow of capitalism and it can never be any different – that this is human destiny, this is human nature.
ADRIENNE RICH

Alternative Consciousness Destiny Flow Grain Idea
So endlessly, still expecting to be believed. We are accustomed to the contempt inherent in the political lie.
ADRIENNE RICH

Accustomed Believed Contempt Endlessly Expecting Inherent Lie Political Still
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
A revolutionary poem will not tell you who or when to kill, what and when to burn, or even how to theorize. It reminds you… where and when and how you are living and might live, it is a wick of desire.
ADRIENNE RICH

Burn Desire Kill Living might Poem Remind Revolutionary Theorize Wick
The mind’s passion is all for singling out. Obscurity has another tale to tell.
ADRIENNE RICH

Another Mind Obscurity Passion Singling Tale
Most women have not even been able to touch this anger, except to drive it inward like a rusted nail.
ADRIENNE RICH

Able Anger Except Inward Nail Rusted Touch Women
Marriage is lonelier than solitude.
ADRIENNE RICH

Lonelier Marriage Solitude
All new learning looks at first like chaos.
ADRIENNE RICH

Chaos First Learning Look New
Courage is not defined by those who fought and did not fall, but by those who fought, fell and rose again.
ADRIENNE RICH

Courage Defined Fall Fought Recovery Rose
Motherhood is the great mesh in which all human relations are entangled, in which lurk our most elemental assumptions about love and power.
ADRIENNE RICH

Assumption Elemental Entangled Lurk Mesh Motherhood Relation
he ocean on whose surface vessels (personified as female) can ride but in whose depth sailors meet their death and monsters conceal themselves.
ADRIENNE RICH

Death Depth Female Menses Monster Moon Ocean Ride Sailor Themselves Tide
The marginal, the dependent variables. It lays the foundation for androcentric thinking, and leaves men safe in their solipsistic tunnel-vision.
ADRIENNE RICH

Androcentric Dependent Foundation Leave Marginal Solipsistic Thinking Tunnel Variable Vision

There is the falsely mystical view of art that assumes a kind of supernatural inspiration, a possession by universal forces unrelated to questions of power and privilege or the artist’s relation to bread and blood. In this view.

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There is the falsely mystical view of art that assumes a kind of supernatural inspiration, a possession by universal forces unrelated to questions of power and privilege or the artist’s relation to bread and blood. In this view.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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