“There is always an unspeakable where, perhaps, the nucleus of the living relation between the poem and the world resides.” — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
For now, poetry has the capacity - in its own ways and by its own means - to remind us of something… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
Poetry can open locked chambers of possibiity, restore numbed zones to feeling, recharge desire. — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
As a very young poet, I had been brought up on that dogma that politics was bad for poetry. — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
Poems are like dreams: in them you put what you don't know you know. — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
“but from here on I want more crazy mourning, more howl, more keening -from "A Woman Dead in Her Forties” — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
I think poets should work in the non-literary, non-academic world, get to know more than a workshop or a university. — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
“It is always what is under pressure in us, especially under pressure of concealment--that explodes in poetry.” — 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
... 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
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
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
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
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
“Nothing can be done but by inches. I write out my life hour by hour, word by word . . . imagining… — 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
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
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
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
“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
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
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
“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
“[Poem II] I wake up in your bed. I know I have been dreaming. Much earlier, the alarm broke us from each… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
“My own luck was being born white and middle-class into a house full of books, with a father who encouraged me to… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
“the phantom of the man-who-would-understand, the lost brother, the twin --- for him did we leave our mothers, deny our sisters, over… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
“WHAT KIND OF TIMES ARE THESE There’s a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill and the old… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
“A lot is being said today about the influence that the myths and images of women have on all of us who… — 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
“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
“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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
... 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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
![“[Poem II] I wake up in your bed. I know I have been dreaming. Much earlier, the alarm broke us from each other, you’ve been at your desk for hours. I know what I dreamed: our friend the poet comes into my room where I’ve been writing for days, drafts, carbons, poems are scattered everywhere, and I…” quote by Adrienne Rich](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/402/adrienne-rich-803_long-way_poem-ii-i-wake-up-in-your-bed-i-know-i-h_1124584.jpg)
