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I don’t think we can separate art from overall human dignity and hope.

Adrienne Rich

When my dreams showed signs of becoming politically correct no unruly images escaping beyond borders … then I began to wonder
ADRIENNE RICH

Becoming Border Correct Dream Escaping Political Politically Showed Sign
The will to change begins in the body, not in the mind.
ADRIENNE RICH

Begin Body Change Mind Will
All new learning looks at first like chaos.
ADRIENNE RICH

Chaos First Learning Look New
Change is not a threat to your life, but an invitation to live.
ADRIENNE RICH

Change Invitation Live Threat
There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep, and still be counted as warriors. (I make up this strange, angry packet for you, threaded with love.) I think you thought there was no such place for you, and perhaps there was none then.
ADRIENNE RICH

Among Counted Down Must None Perhaps Sit Weep
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
To become a token woman – whether you win the Nobel Prize or merely get tenure at the cost of denying your sisters – is to become something less than a man.
ADRIENNE RICH

Brotherhood Denying Law Less Man Nobel Prize Self Sister tenure Winning Woman
When someone, let’s say a teacher, speaks of the world and you are not in it, it’s like looking into the mirror and seeing nothing.
ADRIENNE RICH

Looking Mirror Nothing Someone Speak Teacher World
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
Marriage is lonelier than solitude.
ADRIENNE RICH

Lonelier Marriage Solitude
Waiting for children to grow up, or for the birth of a new child, or for menopause.
ADRIENNE RICH

Birth Child Children Grow Up Waiting
The words are purposes./The words are maps./I came to see the damage that was done/and the treasures that prevail.
ADRIENNE RICH

Damage Done Map Prevail Purpose Treasure Word
As a society in turmoil, we are going to see more, and more various, attempts to simulate order through repression; and art is a historical target for such efforts.
ADRIENNE RICH

Art Effort Going Historical More Order Repression Simulate Society Target Turmoil Various
Across the curve of the earth, there are women getting up before dawn, in the blackness before the point of light, in the twilight before sunrise; there are women rising earlier than men and children to break the ice, to start the stove, to put up the pap.
ADRIENNE RICH

Blackness Children Dawn Light Running Twilight Women
The moment when a feeling enters the body/ is political. This touch is political
ADRIENNE RICH

Body Feeling Political Touch
Since men are loyal at least to their own world-view, their laws of brotherhood and self-interest.
ADRIENNE RICH

Brotherhood Interest Least Loyal Men Own Self Since View World
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
Pride is a tricky, glorious, double-edged feeling.
ADRIENNE RICH

Feeling Inspirational Pride Tricky
We have lived with violence far too long.
ADRIENNE RICH

Lived Long Violence
It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness
ADRIENNE RICH

Ambivalence Blissful Gratification Murderous Nerves Resentment Suffering
Only where there is language is there world.
ADRIENNE RICH

Language Only World
Our personalities seem dangerously to blur and overlap with our mother’s; and, in a desperate attempt to know where mother ends and daughter begins, we perform radical surgery.
ADRIENNE RICH

Attempt Correspond Dangerously Daughter Mother Personalities Personality
We have no familiar, ready-made name for a woman who defines herself, by choice, neither in relation to children nor to men, who is self-identified, who has chosen herself.
ADRIENNE RICH

Chosen Enter Envying Freedom Herself Identifies Imagine Room Think
It’s exhilarating to be alive in a time of awakening consciousness; it can also be confusing, disorienting, and painful.
ADRIENNE RICH

Alive Awakening Confusing Consciousness Disorienting Exhilarating Inspirational Pain Painful Time
The vixen I met at twilight on Route 5 south of Willoughby: long dead. She was an omen to me, surviving, herding her cubs in the silvery bend of the road in nineteen sixty-five.
ADRIENNE RICH

Cub Dead Herding Long Nineteen Omen Survive Twilight Vixen
To allow what you’re reading to pierce routines, safe and impermeable, in which ordinary carnal life is tracked, charted, channeled. Then, what of the right answers.
ADRIENNE RICH

Answer Carnal Charted Impermeable Ordinary Pierce Reading Right Routine Safe
The unconscious wants truth. It ceases to speak to those who want something else more than truth.
ADRIENNE RICH

Cease More Something Speak Truth Unconscious Want

I don’t think we can separate art from overall human dignity and hope.

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I don’t think we can separate art from overall human dignity and hope.

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