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

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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

Collective Liberation Nonviolent

Bagwalas

Probably there is nothing in human nature more resonant with charges than the flow of energy between two biologically alike bodies, one of which has lain in amniotic bliss inside the other, one of which has labored to give birth to the other.

ADRIENNE RICH

Probably there is nothing in human nature more resonant with charges than the flow of energy between two biologically alike bodies, one of which has lain in amniotic bliss inside the other, one of which has labored to give birth to the other.
ADRIENNE RICH

Alike Biological Bodies Charges Nothing Probably Resonant Two
I’ve had to guess at her, sewing her skin together as I sew mine, though with a different stitch

ADRIENNE RICH

I’ve had to guess at her, sewing her skin together as I sew mine, though with a different stitch
ADRIENNE RICH

Mine Sew Skin Stitch Together
Poetry can add its grain to an accumulation of consciousness against the idea that there is no alternative – that we’re just in the great flow of capitalism and it can never be any different – that this is human destiny, this is human nature.

ADRIENNE RICH

Poetry can add its grain to an accumulation of consciousness against the idea that there is no alternative – that we’re just in the great flow of capitalism and it can never be any different – that this is human destiny, this is human nature.
ADRIENNE RICH

Consciousness Flow Grain Idea
Increasingly I think of poetry as a theatre of voices, not as coming from a single “I” or from any one position. I want to imagine voices different from my own.

ADRIENNE RICH

Increasingly I think of poetry as a theatre of voices, not as coming from a single “I” or from any one position. I want to imagine voices different from my own.
ADRIENNE RICH

Coming Increasingly Position Theatre
Despair, when not the response to absolute physical and moral defeat is, like war, the failure of imagination.

ADRIENNE RICH

Despair, when not the response to absolute physical and moral defeat is, like war, the failure of imagination.
ADRIENNE RICH

Confusion
We are, none of us, ‘either’ mothers or daughters; to our amazement, confusion, and greater complexity, we are both.

ADRIENNE RICH

We are, none of us, ‘either’ mothers or daughters; to our amazement, confusion, and greater complexity, we are both.
ADRIENNE RICH

Amazement Both Complexity Confusion Daughter
Responsibility to yourself means that you don’t fall for shallow and easy solutions-it means that you refuse to sell your talents and aspirations short.

ADRIENNE RICH

Responsibility to yourself means that you don’t fall for shallow and easy solutions-it means that you refuse to sell your talents and aspirations short.
ADRIENNE RICH

Aspiration Easy Mean Responsibility Sell Shallow
Art means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of power which holds it hostage.

ADRIENNE RICH

Art means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of power which holds it hostage.
ADRIENNE RICH

Decorate Hold Hostage Mean Nothing Table
The impulse to create begins – often terribly and fearfully – in a tunnel of silence.

ADRIENNE RICH

The impulse to create begins – often terribly and fearfully – in a tunnel of silence.
ADRIENNE RICH

Fearfully Real Terribly Tunnel
Abortion is violence; a deep, desperate violence inflicted by a woman upon, first of all, herself.

ADRIENNE RICH

Abortion is violence; a deep, desperate violence inflicted by a woman upon, first of all, herself.
ADRIENNE RICH

Abortion First
In [family snapshots] the flow of profane time has been stopped and a sacred interval of self-conscious revelation has been cut from it by the edge of the picture frame and the light of the sun or the flash.

ADRIENNE RICH

In [family snapshots] the flow of profane time has been stopped and a sacred interval of self-conscious revelation has been cut from it by the edge of the picture frame and the light of the sun or the flash.
ADRIENNE RICH

Cutting Interval Revelation Self Stopped
Can you remember? when we thought the poets taught how to live?
ADRIENNE RICH

Taught
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.

ADRIENNE RICH

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.
ADRIENNE RICH

Make Perhaps
But nothing less than the most radical imagination will carry us beyond this place, beyond the mere struggle for survival, to that lucid recognition of our possibilities which will keep us impatient, and unresigned to mere survival.

ADRIENNE RICH

But nothing less than the most radical imagination will carry us beyond this place, beyond the mere struggle for survival, to that lucid recognition of our possibilities which will keep us impatient, and unresigned to mere survival.
ADRIENNE RICH

Envying Possibilities Unresigned
But can you imagine how some of them were envying you your freedom to work, to think, to travel, to enter a room as yourself, not as some child’s mother or some man’s wife?

ADRIENNE RICH

But can you imagine how some of them were envying you your freedom to work, to think, to travel, to enter a room as yourself, not as some child’s mother or some man’s wife?
ADRIENNE RICH

Enter Think
The danger lies in forgetting what we had. The flow between generations becomes a trickle, grandchildren tape-recording grandparents’ memories on special occasions perhaps-no casual storytelling jogged by daily life.
ADRIENNE RICH

Casual Daily Flow Forgetting Grandchildren Jogged Storytelling Trick

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