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
Adrienne Rich quotes about
dream memories writing
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.
inspirational time pain
It's exhilarating to be alive in a time of awakening consciousness; it can also be confusing, disorienting, and painful.
change healing poetry
The moment of change is the only poem.
wrecks
I came to explore the wreck.
without-you feels helpless
I feel more helpless with you than without you.
heart simple breaths
It will take all your heart, it will take all your breath It will be short, it will not be simple
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.
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.
moving may november
It is the thirtieth of May, the thirtieth of November, a beginning or an end, we are moving into the solstice and there is so much here I still do not understand.
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 ifs
You must write, and read, as if your life depended on it.
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.
religious law giving
One does not give birth in a void, but rather in a cultural and political context. Laws, professional codes, religious sanctions, and ethnic traditions all affect women's choices concerning childbirth.