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

Adrienne Rich

These scars bear witness but whether to repair or to destruction I no longer know.
ADRIENNE RICH

Bear Destruction Longer Scar Witness
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
Nothing could have prepared me for the realization that I was a mother … when I knew I was still in a state of uncreation myself.
ADRIENNE RICH

Knew Mother Nothing Prepared Realization State Uncertain
Re-vision – the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction – is for woman more than a chapter in cultural history: it is an act of survival.
ADRIENNE RICH

Act Back Chapter Critical Cultural Direction Entering Eye Eyes Fresh History Looking More Self Survival Test Woman
It requires enormous commitment like any art. But there’s a core of desire in each of us and poetry goes to and comes from that core. It’s the social, economic, institutional gap that makes it difficult.
ADRIENNE RICH

Art Come Committed Desire Economic Enormous Institution Poetry Require Social
It is part of our refusal of the self-destructiveness of male-dominated society.
ADRIENNE RICH

Destructiveness Dominated Male Refusal Self Society
I think about the possibilities for empathy, for mutual solidarity among gay men and lesbians, not simply as people who suffer under homophobia, but as people who are also extremely creative, active, and have a particular understanding of the human condition.
ADRIENNE RICH

Gay Lesbian Men People Possibilities Solidarity Suffer Thinking
It iscrucial that we understand lesbian/feminism in the deepest, most radical sense: as that love for ourselves and other women, that commitment to the freedom of all of us, which transcends the category of “sexual preference” and the issue of civil rights.
ADRIENNE RICH

Commitment Deepest Integrity Iscrucial Issue Lesbian Ourselves Radical Sense Understand
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.
ADRIENNE RICH

Birth Code Cultural Giving Law Professional Religious
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
When I talk of taking a trip I mean forever.
ADRIENNE RICH

Forever Mean Taking Talk Trip
In a society where some people are far more educated than others, in which public education is ill-funded – here I am speaking of the U.S. – while we build more and more prisons to incarcerate youth who ought to be in school.
ADRIENNE RICH

Believe Country Educated Education Educational Funded People Public School Society Some Speaking
Women’s art, though created in solitude, wells up out of community.
ADRIENNE RICH

Art Community Creative Energy Enormous Hunger Solitude Women Work
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 Fall Mean Refuse Responsibility Sell Shallow Solution Talent Yourself
To work and suffer is to be at home. All else is scenery.
ADRIENNE RICH

Home Scenery Suffer Suffering
It is the thirtieth of May, the thirtieth of November, a beginning or an end, we are moving into the solstice and there is so much here I still do not understand.
ADRIENNE RICH

Beginning End May Moving November Solistice

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

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

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