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.
One does not give birth in a void, but rather in a cultural and political context. Laws, professional codes, religious sanctions, and ethnic traditions all affect women’s choices concerning childbirth.
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.
There is no simple formula for the relationship of art to justice…In the end, I don’t think we can separate art from overall human dignity and hope. My concern for my country is inextricable from my concerns as an artist.
There’s been real hostility toward political poetry in the U.S., hostility or, at best, incomprehension. I’m speaking of those who have institutional power over what gets published, over grants andprizes and reviewing.
And perhaps there is none now; but we will have to make it, we who want an end to suffering, who want to change the laws of history, if we are not to give ourselves away.
The longer I live the more I mistrust theatricality, the false glamour cast by performance, the more I know its poverty beside the truths we are salvaging from the splitting-open of our lives. -from “Transcendental Etude
My heart is moved by all I cannot save: so much has been destroyed I have to cast my lot with those who age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.
![Adrienne Rich Quote - I do not think [poetry] is more, or less, necessary than food, shelter, health, education, decent working conditions. It is as necessary.](https://minimalistquotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/i-do-not-think-poetry-is-more-or-less-necessary-th-683x1024.jpg)
