Adrienne Rich
Adrienne Rich
Adrienne Cecile Richwas an American poet, essayist and radical feminist. She was called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century", and was credited with bringing "the oppression of women and lesbians to the forefront of poetic discourse."...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth16 May 1929
CityBaltimore, MD
CountryUnited States of America
responsibility warrior thinking
That's why I want to speak to you now. To say: no person, trying to take responsibility for her or his identity, should have to be so alone. There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep, and still be counted as warriors. (I make up this strange, angry packet for you, threaded with love.) I think you thought there was no such place for you, and perhaps there was none then, 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.
writing ifs
You must write, and read, as if your life depended on it.
sleep midnight enough
Sleeping. Turning in turn like planets rotating in their midnight meadow: a touch is enough to let us know we're not alone in the universe, even in sleep.
mean way capacity
For now, poetry has the capacity - in its own ways and by its own means - to remind us of something we are forbidden to see.
writing voice liquid
Poetry is the liquid voice that can wear through stone.
truth-is complexity one-thing
There is no 'the truth,' 'a truth'--truth is not one thing, or even a system. It is an increasing complexity.
memories lying grandchildren
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, there being no shared daily life what with migrations, exiles, diasporas, rendings, the search for work. Or there is a shared daily life riddled with holes of silence.
artist self sentimental
The serious revolutionary, like the serious artist, can't afford to lead a sentimental or self-deceiving life.
art sex loneliness
Art and literature have given so many people the relief of feeling connected - pulled us out of isolation. It has let us know that somebody else breathed and dreamed and had sex and loved and raged and knew loneliness the way we do.
knowing tomorrow helping
I touch you knowing we weren't born tomorrow, and somehow, each of us will help the other live, and somewhere, each of us must help the other die.
poverty transcendental glamour
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
art mean tables
Art means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of power which holds it hostage.
country soul patriotism
A patriot is one who wrestles for the soul of her country as she wrestles for her own being.
without-you feels helpless
I feel more helpless with you than without you.