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I define “politics” as the on-going collective struggle for liberation and for the power to create – not only works of art, but also just and nonviolent social institutions.

Adrienne Rich

It is not really about them though it targets them as consumers.
ADRIENNE RICH

Consumer Really Target Though
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
ADRIENNE RICH

False Glamour Longer Mistrust Performance Poverty Theatricality Transcendental
To become a politics of asking women’s questions, demanding a world in which the integrity of all women–not a chosen few–shall be honored and validated in every respect of culture.
ADRIENNE RICH

Culture Demanding Integrity Politics Power Question Respect Validated Women
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
I keep coming back to you in my head, but you couldn’t know that, and I have no carbons.
ADRIENNE RICH

Back Carbon Coming Head Keep Know
When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart.
ADRIENNE RICH

Around Block Building Collapse Landscape Memories Notebook Prayer
That a war can be represented as helping a people to ‘feel good’ about themselves, or their country, is a measure of that failure.
ADRIENNE RICH

Country Failure Feel Good Helping Measure Represented Themselves War
No woman is really an insider in the institutions fathered by masculine consciousness. When we allow ourselves to believe we are.
ADRIENNE RICH

Believe Consciousness Fathered Insider Inspiring Institution Masculine Really War Woman
The more I live, the more I think, two people together is a miracle.
ADRIENNE RICH

Miracle More People Thinking Together Two
A life I didn’t choose chose me: even my tools are the wrong ones for what I have to do.
ADRIENNE RICH

Choose Even Life One Tool Wrong
A thinking woman sleeps with monsters.
ADRIENNE RICH

Monster Sleep Think Thinking Woman
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
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
The most notable fact that our culture imprints on women is a sense of our limits.
ADRIENNE RICH

Culture Fact Important Imprint Limit Notable Sense
In this disintegrative, technologically-manic time, when public language is so debased, poetry continues to matter because it’s the art that reintegrates words, speech, voice, breath, music, bodily tempo, and the powers of the imagination.
ADRIENNE RICH

Art Breath Continue Debased Disintegrative Imagination Language Manic Matter Music Poetry Public Reintegrates Speech Technologically Time Voice
I guess what concerns me always is the need for a field, a rich compost, for any art to flourish. But however isolate or unheard you may feel, if you have the need to write poetry, are compelled to write it, you go on, whether there is resonance or not.
ADRIENNE RICH

Art Compost Concern Feel Field Flourish Guess Isolate Need Rich Unheard Writing

I define “politics” as the on-going collective struggle for liberation and for the power to create – not only works of art, but also just and nonviolent social institutions.

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I define “politics” as the on-going collective struggle for liberation and for the power to create – not only works of art, but also just and nonviolent social institutions.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Adrienne Rich Quotes