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
I do not think [poetry] is more, or less, necessary than food, shelter, health, education, decent working conditions. It is as necessary. — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
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
Poetry reaches into places in us that we are suppose to ignore or mistrust, that are perceived as subversive or non-useful, in… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
Poetry can add its grain to an accumulation of consciousness against the idea that there is no alternative - that we're just… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
A revolutionary poem will not tell you who or when to kill, what and when to burn, or even how to theorize.… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
“I know you are reading this poem in a room where too much has happened for you to bear where the bedclothes… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
I guess what concerns me always is the need for a field, a rich compost, for any art to flourish. But however… — 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
“ With whom do you believe your lot is cast? From where does your strength come? I think somehow, somewhere every poem… — 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
I want to gesture toward a poetry of ourselves and others under the conditions of twenty-first-century absolutism, making us dimensional in a… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
[The poet] is endowed to speak for those who do not have the gift of language, or to see for those who… — 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
What I discerned in the U.S. was a convergence of poetic voices coming from many different rents in the social fabric, many… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
Increasingly I think of poetry as a theatre of voices, not as coming from a single "I" or from any one position.… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
“Poetry, in its own way, is a carrier of the sparks, because it too comes out of silence, seeking connection with unseen… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
A book of poems doesn't just come out by chance, an editor has to select it, a publisher has to distribute it… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
The kind of poetry that interests me is intellectual and moral and political and sexual and sensual - all of that fermenting… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
I think of poetry as something out there in the world and within each of us. I don't mean that everyone can… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
“her choice to be, not only a poet but a woman who explored her own mind, without any of the guidelines of… — 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 limitless corporate… — Adrienne Rich Copy Share Image
Poetry has always mattered, through human history, through all kinds of cultures, all kinds of violence and human desolation, as well as… — 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
![“I do not think [poetry] is more, or less, necessary than food, shelter, health, education, decent working conditions. It is as necessary.” quote by Adrienne Rich](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/704/adrienne-rich-803_conditions_i-do-not-think-poetry-is-more-or-less-ne_1155959.jpg)
![“[The poet] is endowed to speak for those who do not have the gift of language, or to see for those who - for whatever reasons - are less conscious of what they are living through. It is as though the risks of the poet's existence can be put to some use beyond her own survival.” quote by Adrienne Rich](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/a5d/adrienne-rich-803_conscious_the-poet-is-endowed-to-speak-for-those-w_270364.jpg)
