In this disintegrative, technologically-manic time, when public language is so debased, poetry continues to matter because it's the art that reintegrates words,… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
“No one’s fated or doomed to love anyone. The accidents happen, we’re not heroines, they happen in our lives like car crashes,… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
Poetry can't give us the laws and institutions and representatives, the antidotes we need: only public activism by massive numbers of citizens… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
“Nothing can be done but by inches. I write out my life hour by hour, word by word . . . imagining… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
You have to give your art everything you can - I don't mean only writing, but studying other poets and poetics, thinking,… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
I think many poets, including myself, write both for the voice and for the page. I certainly write for the person alone… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
Over many years so many poets have touched my imagination and opened paths for me - it hardly makes sense to list… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
Poetry is above all a concentration of the power of language, which is the power of our ultimate relationship to everything in… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
The necessity of poetry has to be stated over and over, but only to those who have reason to fear its power,… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
“I know you are reading this poem which is not in your language guessing at some words while others keep you reading… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
In 1945, just at the end of World War II, the American poet Muriel Rukeyser wrote a remarkable book called The Life… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
I've known great happiness in my life along with great darkness, and a question that has repeatedly entered my poetry has been,… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
“We may feel bitterly how little our poems can do in the face of seemingly out of control technological power and seemingly… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
Saw you walking barefoot taking a long look at the new moon's eyelid later spread sleep-fallen, naked in your dark hair asleep… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
There's been real hostility toward political poetry in the U.S., hostility or, at best, incomprehension. I'm speaking of those who have institutional… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
Can individual psychic wounds really heal in an abusive and fragmented society? Audre Lorde has a poem which begins, "What do we… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
I am uncomfortable with talking of poetry as a priestly profession, because I have little use for organized religions and priestly hierarchies.… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
The unconscious wants truth, as the body does. The complexity and fecundity of dreams come from the complexity and fecundity of the… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
... in a history of spiritual rupture, a social compact built on fantasy and collective secrets, poetry becomes more necessary than ever:… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
In the States, there has been, compared to the Sixties and Seventies, a huge retrenchment - not just in poetry - into… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
I am always interested in the ways of scoring the sound of the poem, especially a poem with long lines. Spaces within… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
'Storm Warnings' is a poem about powerlessness - about a force so much greater than our human powers that while it can… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
The impulse to create begins - often terribly and fearfully - in a tunnel of silence. Every real poem is the breaking… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
What I search for continuously in my art is adequate language, language I hope can stand beyond any particular occasion. What I'm… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
“Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you...it means that you do not treat your body… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share
What I search for continuously in my art is adequate language, language I hope can stand beyond any particular occasion. What I'm finding is… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share
“Well, she's long about her coming, who must be more merciless to herself than history. Her mind full to the wind, I see her… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share
I think my work comes out of both an intense desire for connection and what it means to feel isolated. There's always going to… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share
Popular culture entered my life as Shirley Temple, who was exactly my age and wrotea letter in the newspapers telling how her mother fixed… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share
... in a history of spiritual rupture, a social compact built on fantasy and collective secrets, poetry becomes more necessary than ever: it keeps… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share
It's as if, in the mother's eyes, her smile, her stroking touch, the child first reads the message:'You are there!' — Adrienne Rich Copy Share
The women's movement appeared at a very crucial moment in my life. There was a whole political movement asking such questions and others I… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share
The word revolution itself has become not only a dead relic of Leftism, but a key to the deadendedness of male politics: the revolution… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share
The decision to feed the world is the real decision. No revolution has chosen it. For that choice requires that women shall be free. — Adrienne Rich Copy Share
The necessity of poetry has to be stated over and over, but only to those who have reason to fear its power, or those… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share
I think many poets, including myself, write both for the voice and for the page. I certainly write for the person alone in the… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share
If I cling to circumstances I could feel not responsible. Only she who says she did not choose, is the loser in the end. — Adrienne Rich Copy Share
