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 RICHWhat I discerned in the U.S. was a convergence of poetic voices coming from many different rents in the social fabric, many cultures, many tributaries, which, together, make up the American poetry of the late twentieth century.
More Adrienne Rich Quotes
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Not biology, but ignorance of ourselves, has been the key to our powerlessness
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Passion for survival is the great theme of women’s poetry.
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It requires enormous commitment like any art. But there’s a core of desire in each of us and poetry goes to and comes from that core. It’s the social, economic, institutional gap that makes it difficult.
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The kind of poetry that interests me is intellectual and moral and political and sexual and sensual – all of that fermenting together.
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If we had time and no money, living by our wits, what story would you tell?
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I’ve known great happiness in my life along with great darkness, and a question that has repeatedly entered my poetry has been, how do we use the direct experience of happiness that may be given us.
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That a war can be represented as helping a people to ‘feel good’ about themselves, or their country, is a measure of that failure.
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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.
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I long to create something that can’t be used to keep us passive: I want to write a script about plumbing, how every pipe is joined to every other.
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… this world gives no room to be what we dreamt of being
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I don’t trust them but I’m learning to use them.
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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.
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The liar leads an existence of unutterable loneliness.
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The beauty of darkness is how it lets you see.
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As her sons have seen her: the mother in patriarchy: controlling, erotic, castrating, heart-suffering, guilt-ridden, and guilt-provoking; a marble brow.
ADRIENNE RICH