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Adrienne Rich

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“It iscrucial that we understand lesbian/feminism in the deepest, most radical sense: as that love for ourselves and other women, that commitment to the freedom of all of us, which transcends the category of "sexual preference" and the issue of civil rights, to become a politics of asking women's questions, demanding a world in which the integrity of all women--not a chosen few--shall be honored and validated in every respect of culture.”

WorldCultureIssuesRightsFeminismIntegrityCommitmentAskingChosenCivil RightsRadicalCategoriesHonoredPreference
Author:Adrienne Rich
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“The impulse to create begins - often terribly and fearfully - in a tunnel of silence. Every real poem is the breaking of an existing silence, and the first question we might ask any poem is, What kind of voice is breaking silence, and what kind of silence is being broken?”

FirstsKindRealMightAsksVoiceSilenceBrokenImpulseSilence IsTunnelsBreaking SilenceBeing Broken
Book:Arts of the Possible: Essays and Conversations
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“I am always interested in the ways of scoring the sound of the poem, especially a poem with long lines. Spaces within a line, double colons, slashes, are indications of pause, of breath, of urgency, they are not metrically exact as in a musical notation but they serve (I hope) to make the reader think about the sound of the poem - just as traffic symbols, when driving, make us almost unconsciously aware of a steep hill, an intersection, an icy bridge etc.”

ThinkingWayLongSoundLinesSpaceReaderBreathsMusicalDrivingSymbolsHillsBridgesEtcTrafficPausesUrgencyIndicationSteepIcyIntersectionsLong Lines
Author:Adrienne Rich
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“No one ever told us we had to study our lives,make of our lives a study, as if learning natural historyor music, that we should beginwith the simple exercises firstand slowly go on tryingthe hard ones, practicing till strengthand accuracy became one with the daringto leap into transcendence, take the chance of breaking down in the wild arpeggioor faulting the full sentence of the fugue.”

IfsShouldHardNaturalChanceSimpleStudyOur LivesGoes OnExerciseSentencesLeapBreaking DownTranscendenceAccuracyFugue
Author:Adrienne Rich
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“Across the curve of the earth, there are women getting up before dawn, in the blackness before the point of light, in the twilight before sunrise; there are women rising earlier than men and children to break the ice, to start the stove, to put up the pap, the coffee, the rice, to iron the pants, to braid the hair, to pull the day's water up from the well, to boil water for tea, to wash the children for school, to pull the vegetables and start the walk to market, to run to catch the bus for the work that is paid. I don't know when most women sleep.”

KnowsMenWellsChildrenLightRunningSchoolEarthWaterSleepWalksBreakHairPaidCoffeeIceTeaDawnRisingIronBusVegetablesPantsTwilightSunriseCurvesRiceBlacknessStovesBraidsPoints Of LightBefore Sunrise
Author:Adrienne Rich
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“Poetry has always mattered, through human history, through all kinds of cultures, all kinds of violence and human desolation, as well as periods of great human affirmation. It's been associated with the power of the word, with the sacred, with magic and transformation, with the oral narratives that help a people cohere.”

PeopleHumansWellsKindHelpingCultureViolenceMagicPeriodsTransformationSacredAll KindsNarrativeAffirmationHuman HistoryDesolation
Author:Adrienne Rich
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“In the States, there has been, compared to the Sixties and Seventies, a huge retrenchment - not just in poetry - into the personal. A withdrawal from thinking in terms of social and collective values, needs and solutions. The consciousness-raising groups of the women's movement, for instance, becoming "support-groups" or therapy groups.”

ThinkingNeedsHas BeensStatesValuesSocialTermConsciousnessSupportGroupsMovementHugeBecomingSolutionsInstanceTherapyCollectivesSixtySeventiesWithdrawalSupport Groups
Author:Adrienne Rich
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“We've learned a lot from the great psychologists. Wilhelm Reich wrote about the relationship between fascism and sexual repression. Freud rediscovered the underworld of consciousness that European rationalism had denied. But when you have a nation of people in therapy and counselling, "support" groups for every kind of human condition, where, in the clichés of that milieu, people "share" and "heal," the question, "What for?", "What now?" is no longer asked.”

PeopleHumansKindNationsConsciousnessSupportGroupsShareConditionsHealTherapyFascismDeniedHuman ConditionRepressionPsychologistRationalismUnderworldMilieuSupport Groups
Author:Adrienne Rich
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“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 power over what gets published, over grants andprizes and reviewing. Most of them, though not all, arewhite and male. But even as American society is unravelling, becoming more violent and punitive, wonderful political poetshave been emerging.”

RealPoliticalWonderfulBecomingMalesViolentGrantsHostilityEmergingBecoming MoreAmerican SocietyIncomprehensionBeen Real
Author:Adrienne Rich
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“In a society where some people are far more educated than others, in which public education is ill-funded - here I am speaking of the U.S. - while we build more and more prisons to incarcerate youth who ought to be in school, there is already a gap between those with education and those without. Those with educational privilege can be seen as arrogant, remote, alien - and very often they believe themselves superior.”

PeopleBelieveSchoolYouthOughtPrisonIllPrivilegeEducationalSuperiorsEducatedAliensGapsArrogantHere I AmPublic EducationPeaking
Author:Adrienne Rich
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“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.”

NeedsHumansChildrenWarMotherPassionForceCommonPovertyBattleSurvivalHuman LifeSicknessExploitationCallousness
Book:Of woman born motherhood as experience and institution
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