Adrienne Rich Quotes

Adrienne Rich was an American poet, essayist, and feminist. She was known for her powerful and evocative poetry that addressed themes of gender, sexuality, and social justice. Rich's literary contributions and her activism have made her a significant figure in contemporary poetry and the feminist movement.

Poetry is above all a concentration of the power of language, which is the power of our ultimate relationship to everything in the universe.

Adrienne Rich , Poet
False history gets made all day, any day, the trut... -Adrienne Rich

False history gets made all day, any day, the truth of the new is never on the news.

Adrienne Rich , Poet
Discovering the context

This quote suggests that misinformation or distorted versions of history are frequently created or perpetuated, often overshadowing the truth. It implies a critique of media narratives and the recognition that the news may not always reflect or prioritize the objective reality of historical events.

Life on the planet is born of woman.... -Adrienne Rich

Life on the planet is born of woman.

Adrienne Rich , Poet

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 , Poet

It's exhilarating to be alive in a time of awakening consciousness; it can also be confusing, disorienting, and painful.

Adrienne Rich , Poet
The moment of change is the only poem.... -Adrienne Rich

The moment of change is the only poem.

Adrienne Rich , Poet
Discovering the context

This quote implies that the essence of poetry lies in capturing or encapsulating moments of transformation or transition, suggesting that the inherent power and impact of poetry reside in its ability to distill and convey the fleeting, profound, or pivotal moments of change, offering a unique perspective on the nature of existence.

When a woman tells the truth she is creating the p... -Adrienne Rich

When a woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility for more truth around her.

Adrienne Rich , Poet

We might possess every technological resource... but if our language is inadequate, our vision remains formless, our thinking and feeling are still running in the old cycles, our process may be 'revolutionary' but not transformative.

Adrienne Rich , Poet

Lesbian existence comprises both the breaking of a taboo and the rejection of a compulsory way of life. It is also a direct or indirect attack on the male right of access to women.

Adrienne Rich , Poet
I keep coming back to you in my head, but you coul... -Adrienne Rich

I keep coming back to you in my head, but you couldn't know that, and I have no carbons.

Adrienne Rich , Poet

The repossession by women of our bodies will bring far more essential change to human society than the seizing of the means of production by workers.

Adrienne Rich , Poet
A thinking woman sleeps with monsters.... -Adrienne Rich

A thinking woman sleeps with monsters.

Adrienne Rich , Poet
At twenty, I implicitly dissociated poetry from po... -Adrienne Rich

At twenty, I implicitly dissociated poetry from politics.

Adrienne Rich , Poet
The mind's passion is all for singling out. Obscur... -Adrienne Rich

The mind's passion is all for singling out. Obscurity has another tale to tell.

Adrienne Rich , Poet
Art, whose honesty must work through artifice, can... -Adrienne Rich

Art, whose honesty must work through artifice, cannot avoid cheating truth.

Adrienne Rich , Poet

The mother's battle for her child with sickness, with poverty, with war, with all the forces of exploitation and callousness that cheapen human life needs to become a common human battle, waged in love and in the passion for survival.

Adrienne Rich , Poet

Every journey into the past is complicated by delusions, false memories, false namings of real events.

Adrienne Rich , Poet

The worker can unionize, go out on strike; mothers are divided from each other in homes, tied to their children by compassionate bonds; our wildcat strikes have most often taken the form of physical or mental breakdown.

Adrienne Rich , Poet

Poetry can't give us the laws and institutions and representatives, the antidotes we need: only public activism by massive numbers of citizens can do that.

Adrienne Rich , Poet

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 , Poet

The connections between and among women are the most feared, the most problematic, and the most potentially transforming force on the planet.

Adrienne Rich , Poet

I want to gesture toward a poetry of ourselves and others under the conditions of twenty-first-century absolutism, making us dimensional in a time when the human concrete is continually erased by state and religious violence and by disingenuous jargon serving state power.

Adrienne Rich , Poet

'Storm Warnings' is a poem about powerlessness - about a force so much greater than our human powers that while it can be measured and even predicted, it is beyond human control. All 'we' can do is create an interior space against the storm, an enclave of self-protection, though the winds of change till penetrate keyholes and 'unsealed apertures.'

Adrienne Rich , Poet
Pride is a tricky, glorious, double-edged feeling.... -Adrienne Rich

Pride is a tricky, glorious, double-edged feeling.

Adrienne Rich , Poet
Lying is done with words and also with silence.... -Adrienne Rich

Lying is done with words and also with silence.

Adrienne Rich , Poet

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