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
air america bring design face fire flag heart open seen slow stopped sucked true
Open Air Museum. Seen from a train, stopped / As by design, to bring us / Face to face with the flag of our true country: / Violet-yellow, black-violet, / Its heart sucked by slow fire / O my America / This then your desire?
heart weather predictions
Weather abroad and weather in the heart alike come on Regardless of prediction.
grief heart dust
Grief held back from the lips wears at the heart; the drop that refused to join the river dried up in the dust.
heart simple breaths
It will take all your heart, it will take all your breath It will be short, it will not be simple
heart age world
My heart is moved by all I cannot save: so much has been destroyed I have to cast my lot with those who age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.
mother heart son
As her sons have seen her: the mother in patriarchy: controlling, erotic, castrating, heart-suffering, guilt-ridden, and guilt-provoking; a marble brow, 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.
suicide heart years
in the nineteenth year and the eleventh month speak your tattered Kaddish for all suicides: Praise to life though it crumbled in like a tunnel on ones we knew and loved Praise to life though its windows blew shut on the breathing-room of ones we knew and loved Praise to life though ones we knew and loved loved it badly, too well, and not enough Praise to life though it tightened like a knot on the hearts of ones we thought we knew loved us Praise to life giving room and reason to ones we knew and loved who felt unpraisable. Praise to them, how they loved it, when they could.
daughter father creativity
It is the lesbian in us who is creative, for the dutiful daughter of the fathers in us is only a hack.
art wall years
One line typed twenty years ago can be blazed on a wall in spraypaint to glorify art as detachment or torture of those we did not love but also did not want to kill.
writing knowledge long
I long to create something that can't be used to keep us passive: I want to write a script about plumbing, how every pipe is joined to every other.
life memories suspense
We see daily that our lives are terrible and little, without continuity, buyable and salable at any moment, mere blips on a screen, that this is the way we live now. Memory marketed as nostalgia; terror reduced to mere suspense, to melodrama.
life tools
A life I didn't choose chose me: even my tools are the wrong ones for what I have to do.
philosophy past wind
... if, as women, we accept a philosophy of history that asserts that women are by definition assimilated into the male universal,that we can understand our past through a male lens--if we are unaware that women even have a history--we live our lives similarly unanchored, drifting in response to a veering wind of myth and bias.
hope mean cities
What would it mean to live in a city whose people were changing each other's despair into hope?-- You yourself must change it.