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When one woman tells her truth, it makes a space for other women to tell their truths.

Adrienne Rich

The necessity of poetry has to be stated over and over, but only to those who have reason to fear its power.
ADRIENNE RICH

Believe Fear Necessity Poetry Power Reason Trying
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 we see, we see and seeing is changing
ADRIENNE RICH

Changing See Seeing
A language is a map of our failures.
ADRIENNE RICH

Failure Language Map
I think many poets, including myself, write both for the voice and for the page. I certainly write for the person alone in the library, who pulls down a book and it opens to a poem. I am also very conscious of what it means to read these poems aloud.
ADRIENNE RICH

Alone Book Both Certainly Conscious Library Mean Page Person Poem Poet Voice Writing
A huge breast, an avid cave; between her legs snakes, swamp-grass, or teeth; on her lap a helpless infant or a martyred son. She exists for one purpose: to bear and nourish the son.
ADRIENNE RICH

Avid Breast Cave Exist Grass Helpless Huge Leg Martyred Purpose Snake Son Swamp Teeth
We need to imagine a world in which every woman is the presiding genius of her own body.
ADRIENNE RICH

Body Children Genius Imagine Motherhood New Relationship Woman World
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 decision to feed the world is the real decision. No revolution has chosen it. For that choice requires that women shall be free.
ADRIENNE RICH

Choices Chosen Decision Real Require Revolution Woman
A book of poems doesn’t just come out by chance, an editor has to select it, a publisher has to distribute it or you will never see it.
ADRIENNE RICH

Book Chance Distribute Editor never Poem Select
You must write, and read, as if your life depended on it.
ADRIENNE RICH

Depended Life Must Read Writing
A revolutionary poem will not tell you who or when to kill, what and when to burn, or even how to theorize. It reminds you… where and when and how you are living and might live, it is a wick of desire.
ADRIENNE RICH

Burn Desire Kill Living might Poem Remind Revolutionary Theorize Wick
I’d call it love if love didn’t take so many years but lust too is a jewel.
ADRIENNE RICH

Call Jewels Love Sex Tale Year
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
The impulse to create begins – often terribly and fearfully – in a tunnel of silence.
ADRIENNE RICH

Create Fearfully Impulse Real Silence Terribly Tunnel Voice
Young people know they are being betrayed by he mass electronic media. It caricatures them, caricatures others.
ADRIENNE RICH

Betrayed Caricature Electronic Mass Media Other People Target

When one woman tells her truth, it makes a space for other women to tell their truths.

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When one woman tells her truth, it makes a space for other women to tell their truths.

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