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

Power Above Universe Relationship

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

Adrienne Rich

Back Coming Head Keep

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

Adrienne Rich

Truth Avoid Honesty Art

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Lying is done with words and also with silence.

Adrienne Rich

Silence Also Done Lying

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The moment of change is the only poem.

Adrienne Rich

Change Moment Only Poem

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

Adrienne Rich

Planet Force Among Feared

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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

Belongs Death Famine Life

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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

Mental Bonds Homes Strike

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

Adrienne Rich

False Past Real Events

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

Adrienne Rich

Alive Time Painful Also

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

Adrienne Rich

Tale Passion Tell Mind

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Life on the planet is born of woman.

Adrienne Rich

Born Life Planet Woman

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

Adrienne Rich

News Truth False New

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

Adrienne Rich

Truth Creating More Around

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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

Society Human Change Bring

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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

Access Direct Life Taboo

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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

Cycles Process Vision Remains

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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 Live Living Desire

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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

Survival Passion Battle Child

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At twenty, I implicitly dissociated poetry from politics.

Adrienne Rich

Implicitly Poetry Politics Twenty

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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

Citizens Activism Public Laws

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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

State Violence Erased Concrete

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"22 Adrienne Rich Quotes & Sayings

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

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

Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich

Lying is done with words and also with silence.

Adrienne Rich

The moment of change is the only poem.

Adrienne Rich

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

Adrienne Rich

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

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

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

Adrienne Rich

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

Adrienne Rich

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

Adrienne Rich

Life on the planet is born of woman.

Adrienne Rich

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

Adrienne Rich

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

Adrienne Rich

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

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

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

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

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

At twenty, I implicitly dissociated poetry from politics.

Adrienne Rich

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

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

Adrienne Rich Quotes & Sayings

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