black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

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

The ocean, whose tides respond, like women’s menses, to the pull of the moon, the ocean which corresponds to the amniotic fluid in which human life begins.
ADRIENNE RICH

Correspond Men's Monsters Moon Ocean Pull Respond Women
I believe that words can help us move or keep us paralyzed, and that our choices of language and verbal tone have something – a great deal – to do with how we live our lives.
ADRIENNE RICH

Believe Choice Deal Inspirational Keep Language Live Moving Paralyzed Something
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
What I discerned in the U.S. was a convergence of poetic voices coming from many different rents in the social fabric, many cultures, many tributaries, which, together, make up the American poetry of the late twentieth century.
ADRIENNE RICH

Century Coming Country Culture Different Discerned Poetic Role Social Together Voice
False history gets made all day, any day, the truth of the new is never on the news.
ADRIENNE RICH

Day Historical History New News Truth
The will to change begins in the body, not in the mind.
ADRIENNE RICH

Begin Body Change Mind Will
To work and suffer is to be at home. All else is scenery.
ADRIENNE RICH

Home Scenery Suffer Suffering
The connections between and among women are the most feared, the most problematic, and the most potentially transforming force on the planet.
ADRIENNE RICH

Connection Feminist Force Inspirational Motivational Planet Problem Transforming Women
The kind of poetry that interests me is intellectual and moral and political and sexual and sensual – all of that fermenting together.
ADRIENNE RICH

Fermenting Intellectual Interest Kind Moral People Poetry Political Sensual Sexual Together
To write as if your life depended on it; to write across the chalkboard, putting up there in public the words you have dredged; sieved up in dreams, from behind screen memories, out of silence– words you have dreaded and needed in order to know you exist.
ADRIENNE RICH

Across Chalkboard Depended Dream Dredged Life Memories Public Sieved Word Writing
I am a woman in the prime of my life, with certain powers and those powers severely limited by authorities whose faces I rarely see.
ADRIENNE RICH

Authorities Authority Certain Face Life Power Prime Rarely Woman
The more I live, the more I think, two people together is a miracle.
ADRIENNE RICH

Miracle More People Thinking Together Two
A thinking woman sleeps with monsters.
ADRIENNE RICH

Monster Sleep Think Thinking Woman
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 Mother
The assumption that women are a subgroup, that men’s culture is the ‘real’ world, that patriarchy is equivalent to culture and culture to patriarchy, that the ‘great’ or ‘liberalizing’ periods of history have been the same for women as for men.
ADRIENNE RICH

Assumption Culture Men Patriarchy Real Subgroup Women World
These scars bear witness but whether to repair or to destruction I no longer know.
ADRIENNE RICH

Bear Destruction Longer Scar Witness
They can rule the world while they can persuade us our pain belongs in some order is death by famine worse than death by suicide, than a life of famine and suicide…?
ADRIENNE RICH

Belong Death Famine Pain Persuade Suicide Wose
I long to create something that can’t be used to keep us passive: I want to write a script about plumbing, how every pipe is joined to every other.
ADRIENNE RICH

Create Every Joined Keep Knowledge Long Passive Pipe Plumbing Script Something Used Writing
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
The revolution of a wheel which returns in the end to the same place; the revolving door of a politics which has liberated women only to use them, and only within the limits of male tolerance.
ADRIENNE RICH

Door Limit Male Politics Return Revolution Same Tolerance
The moment when a feeling enters the body/ is political. This touch is political
ADRIENNE RICH

Body Feeling Political Touch
You must write, and read, as if your life depended on it.
ADRIENNE RICH

Depended Life Must Read Writing
Most of them, though not all, arewhite and male. But even as American society is unravelling, becoming more violent and punitive, wonderful political poetshave been emerging.
ADRIENNE RICH

Country Poets have Unravelling Violent Wonderful
A language is a map of our failures.
ADRIENNE RICH

Failure Language Map
The words are purposes./The words are maps./I came to see the damage that was done/and the treasures that prevail.
ADRIENNE RICH

Damage Done Map Prevail Purpose Treasure Word
The so-called multiple-choice examination sheet with the number 2 pencil to mark one choice and one choice only?
ADRIENNE RICH

Choice Examination Multiple Number Pencil Sheet
Despair, when not the response to absolute physical and moral defeat is, like war, the failure of imagination.
ADRIENNE RICH

Absolute Confusion Defeat Despair Failure Imagination Physical Response War

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?

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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?

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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