Adrienne Rich

Poet

50 Quotes

Art, whose honesty must work through artifice, cannot avoid cheating truth.

Lesbian existence comprises both the breaking of a taboo and the rejection of a compulsory way of life. It is also a direct or indirect attack on the male right of access to women.

I keep coming back to you in my head, but you couldn't know that, and I have no carbons.

A revolutionary poem will not tell you who or when to kill, what and when to burn, or even how to theorize. It reminds you... where and when and how you are living and might live, it is a wick of desire.

I keep coming back to you in my head, but you couldn't know that, and I have no carbons.

When a woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility for more truth around her.

Poetry can't give us the laws and institutions and representatives, the antidotes we need: only public activism by massive numbers of citizens can do that.

Poetry can't give us the laws and institutions and representatives, the antidotes we need: only public activism by massive numbers of citizens can do that.

'Storm Warnings' is a poem about powerlessness - about a force so much greater than our human powers that while it can be measured and even predicted, it is beyond human control. All 'we' can do is create an interior space against the storm, an enclave of self-protection, though the winds of change till penetrate keyholes and 'unsealed apertures.'

The connections between and among women are the most feared, the most problematic, and the most potentially transforming force on the planet.

They can rule the world while they can persuade us our pain belongs in some order is death by famine worse than death by suicide, than a life of famine and suicide?

A revolutionary poem will not tell you who or when to kill, what and when to burn, or even how to theorize. It reminds you... where and when and how you are living and might live, it is a wick of desire.

The mother's battle for her child with sickness, with poverty, with war, with all the forces of exploitation and callousness that cheapen human life needs to become a common human battle, waged in love and in the passion for survival.

The mother's battle for her child with sickness, with poverty, with war, with all the forces of exploitation and callousness that cheapen human life needs to become a common human battle, waged in love and in the passion for survival.

The repossession by women of our bodies will bring far more essential change to human society than the seizing of the means of production by workers.

The moment of change is the only poem.

'Storm Warnings' is a poem about powerlessness - about a force so much greater than our human powers that while it can be measured and even predicted, it is beyond human control. All 'we' can do is create an interior space against the storm, an enclave of self-protection, though the winds of change till penetrate keyholes and 'unsealed apertures.'

When a woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility for more truth around her.

The connections between and among women are the most feared, the most problematic, and the most potentially transforming force on the planet.

False history gets made all day, any day, the truth of the new is never on the news.

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