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Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich Quotes

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Famous Adrienne Rich Quotes

“The necessity of poetry has to be stated over and over, but only to those who have reason to fear its power, or those who still believe that language is 'only words' and that an old language is good enough for our descriptions of the world we are trying to transform.”

WorldTryingBelieveStillsReasonEnoughPoetryLanguagePoetDescriptionGood EnoughSocial Change
Book:On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978
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“White hate crimes, white hate speech. I still try to claim I wasn't brought up to hate. But hate isn't the half of it. I grew up in the vast encircling presumption of whiteness - that primary quality of being which knows itself, its passions, only against an otherness that has to be dehumanized. I grew up in white silence that was utterly obsessional. Race was the theme whatever the topic.”

KnowsTryingStillsHatePassionWhiteRaceHalfSilenceQualityCrimeGrewSpeechGrew UpRacismClaimsPrimariesThemeTopicsHate CrimePresumptionWhitenessOthernessHate Speech
Author:Adrienne Rich
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“The [Vietnam War Memorial] Wall became a magnet for citizens of every generation, class, race, and relationship to the war perhaps because it is the only great public monument that allows the anesthetized holes in the heart to fill with a truly national grief.”

HeartWarGriefRaceClassGenerationsWallCitizensHolesVietnamMemorialMonumentVietnam WarMagnet
Book:What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics (Expanded Edition)
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“... people are growing up in the slack flicker of a pale light which lacks the concentrated burn of a candle flame or oil wick or the bulb of a gooseneck desk lamp: a pale, wavering, oblong shimmer, emitting incessant noise, which is to real knowledge or discourse what the manic or weepy protestations of a drunk are to responsible speech. Drunks do have a way of holding an audience, though, and so does the shimmery ill-focused oblong screen.”

PeopleWayDoeRealLightAudienceGrowing UpGrowingSpeechResponsibleIllFocusedOilScreensNoiseDrunkFlamesCandlePaleDesksDiscourseLampsBulbsManicIncessantFlickerWaveringShimmerReal Knowledge
Author:Adrienne Rich
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“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand--a center of gravity.”

Has BeensBookBodyHandsPoetryTurnsFallLanguageMemoriesPrayerBuildingPoetDisasterBlockDustLandscapeGravityCollapseCould Have BeenColumnsNotebookJerkBarrelsDebrisBucklesCenter Of Gravity
Book:What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics (Expanded Edition)
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“... in a history of spiritual rupture, a social compact built on fantasy and collective secrets, poetry becomes more necessary than ever: it keeps the underground aquifers flowing; it is the liquid voice that can wear through stone.”

SpiritualSpiritPoetrySocialVoiceSecretFantasyPoetBuiltStonesCollectivesPoetry IsLiquidCompactRuptureAquifers
Book:What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics (Expanded Edition)
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“... 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.”

IfsPhilosophyPastAcceptingHistoryOur LivesWindUniversalResponseMalesDefinitionsMythBiasOur PastLensesDrifting
Book:Blood, Bread, and Poetry: Selected Prose 1979-1985
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“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.”

WayLifeLittlesMomentsMemoriesOur LivesTerribleMereTerrorScreensNostalgiaSuspenseContinuityMelodrama
Book:What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics (Expanded Edition)
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“... how have I used rivers, how have I used wars to escape writing of the worst thing of all-- not the crimes of other, not even our own death, but the failure to want our freedom passionately enough so that blighted elms, sick rivers, massacres would seem mere emblems of that desecration of ourselves?”

WantWritingWarEnoughSeemsUsedFreedomWorstCrimeRiversSickMereWorst ThingsMassacresEmblems
Book:The Dream of a Common Language: Poems 1974-1977
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“The belief that established science and scholarship--which have so relentlessly excluded women from their making--are "objective"and "value-free" and that feminist studies are "unscholarly," "biased," and "ideological" dies hard. Yet the fact is that all science, and all scholarship, and all art are ideological; there is no neutrality in culture!”

ArtHardFactsValuesDiesCultureBeliefStudyFeministObjectivesScholarshipIdeologicalExcludedBiasedNeutrality
Author:Adrienne Rich
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