black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

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

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
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
False history gets made all day, any day, the truth of the new is never on the news False history gets written every day … the lesbian archaeologist watches herself sifting her own life out from the shards she’s piecing, asking the clay all questions but her own.
ADRIENNE RICH

Clay Day Every False History Watches Written
Made difficult-to-come-by, whatever is buried in the memory by the collapse of meaning under an inadequate or lying language – this will become, not merely unspoken, but unspeakable.
ADRIENNE RICH

Buried Collapse Difficult Inadequate Memory Merely Unspeakable Unspoken
If you teach, you see this is not true. It may be that newer generations do not worship the text as some of their elders do.
ADRIENNE RICH

Been Compared Elder Generation Teach Worship
Passion for survival is the great theme of women’s poetry.
ADRIENNE RICH

Great Passion Poetry Survival Theme Women
Some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand–a center of gravity.
ADRIENNE RICH

Body Book Carried Center Gravity Memory Poetry Prayer Some Stained Turn Varied
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
I am an instrument in the shape/ of a woman trying to translate pulsations/ into images for the relief of the body/ and the reconstruction of the mind.
ADRIENNE RICH

Body Instrument Mind relief Shape Trying
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
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
To read as if your life depended on it would mean to let into your reading your beliefs, the swirl of your dreamlife, the physical sensations of your ordinary carnal life; and simultaneously.
ADRIENNE RICH

Belief Depended Dreamlife Intelligent Mean Multiple Choice Physical Reading Sensation Swirl
In a history of spiritual rupture, a social compact built on fantasy and collective secrets, poetry becomes more necessary than ever: it keeps the underground aquifers flowing; it is the liquid voice that can wear through stone.
ADRIENNE RICH

Aquifer Collective History Rupture Secret Spiritual Voice
We who were loved will never unlive that crippling fever.
ADRIENNE RICH

Crippling Fever Love Loved Unlive
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
We can count on so few people to go that hard way with us.
ADRIENNE RICH

Count Few Hard People Way

he ocean on whose surface vessels (personified as female) can ride but in whose depth sailors meet their death and monsters conceal themselves.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

he ocean on whose surface vessels (personified as female) can ride but in whose depth sailors meet their death and monsters conceal themselves.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Adrienne Rich Quotes