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Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich Quotes

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Famous Adrienne Rich Quotes

“The worker can unionize, go out on strike; mothers are divided from each other in homes, tied to their children by compassionate bonds; our wildcat strikes have most often taken the form of physical or mental breakdown.”

ChildrenHomeFormMotherInspiringTakenWorkersStrikesTiesDividedCompassionateTiedMothers DayBreakdownRich WomenMental BreakdownWildcats
Book:Of woman born motherhood as experience and institution
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“Re-vision – the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering an old text from a new critical direction – is for woman more than a chapter in cultural history: it is an act of survival. Until we understand the assumptions in which we are drenched we cannot know ourselves. And this drive to self-knowledge, for women, is more than a search for identity: it is part of our refusal of the self-destructiveness of male-dominated society.”

KnowsSelfEyeVisionSeeingIdentitySurvivalMalesCriticalAssumptionChaptersLooking BackSelf KnowledgeEnteringRefusalDestructivenessSearch For Identity
Author:Adrienne Rich
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“in the nineteenth year and the eleventh month speak your tattered Kaddish for all suicides: Praise to life though it crumbled in like a tunnel on ones we knew and loved Praise to life though its windows blew shut on the breathing-room of ones we knew and loved Praise to life though ones we knew and loved loved it badly, too well, and not enough Praise to life though it tightened like a knot on the hearts of ones we thought we knew loved us Praise to life giving room and reason to ones we knew and loved who felt unpraisable. Praise to them, how they loved it, when they could.”

GivingYearsWellsHeartReasonEnoughSpeakFeltRoomsMonthsWindowPraiseSuicideBreathingTunnelsKnots
Author:Adrienne Rich
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“That's why I want to speak to you now. To say: no person, trying to take responsibility for her or his identity, should have to be so alone. There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep, and still be counted as warriors. (I make up this strange, angry packet for you, threaded with love.) I think you thought there was no such place for you, and perhaps there was none then, and perhaps there is none now; but we will have to make it, we who want an end to suffering, who want to change the laws of history, if we are not to give ourselves away.”

IfsThinkingWantGivingShouldTryingPersonsStillsEndsLawSufferingSpeakResponsibilityIdentityStrangeShould HaveDown AndAngryWarriorTaking Responsibility
Book:Your Native Land, Your Life
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“There is no 'the truth','a truth' - truth is not one thing, or even a system. It is an increasing complexity. the pattern of the carpet is a surface. When we look closely, or when we become weavers, we learn of the tiny multiple threads unseen in the overall pattern, the knots on the underside of the carpet”

LooksOne ThingTruth IsPatternsSurfaceTinyComplexityThreadMultipleUnseenCarpetKnotsWeavers
Book:Arts of the Possible: Essays and Conversations
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“To read as if your life depended on it would mean to let into your reading your beliefs, the swirl of your dreamlife, the physical sensations of your ordinary carnal life; and simultaneously, to allow what you're reading to pierce routines, safe and impermeable, in which ordinary carnal life is tracked, charted, channeled. Then, what of the right answers, the so-called multiple-choice examination sheet with the number 2 pencil to mark one choice and one choice only?”

IfsMeanLife IsChoicesReadingBeliefAnswersNumbersSafeOrdinaryMarkSensationsMultipleSheetsPencilsExaminationPierceRight AnswersSwirlsMultiple ChoiceNumber 2
Author:Adrienne Rich
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“Whatever is unnamed, undepicted in images, whatever is omitted from biography, censored in collections of letters, whatever is misnamed as something else, made difficult-to-come-by, whatever is buried in the memory by the collapse of meaning under an inadequate or lying language - this will become, not merely unspoken, but unspeakable.”

MadeLyingLanguageDifficultMemoriesLettersCollectionsBuriedCollapseBiographiesInadequateUnspokenUnspeakableCensored
Author:Adrienne Rich
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“To write as if your life depended on it; to write across the chalkboard, putting up there in public the words you have dredged; sieved up in dreams, from behind screen memories, out of silence-- words you have dreaded and needed in order to know you exist.”

IfsKnowsWritingDreamOrderMemoriesBehindsSilenceNeededScreensChalkboards
Book:What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics (Expanded Edition)
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“Saw you walking barefoot taking a long look at the new moon's eyelid later spread sleep-fallen, naked in your dark hair asleep but not oblivious of the unslept unsleeping elsewhere Tonight I think no poetry will serve Syntax of rendition: verb pilots the plane adverb modifies action verb force-feeds noun submerges the subject noun is choking verb disgraced goes on doing now diagram the sentence”

ThinkingLooksLongActionForceDarkSleepSawsSubjectsHairGoes OnWalkingMoonSpreadSentencesNakedPlanesFallenTonightPilotsElsewhereChokeVerbsNounsObliviousBarefootEyelidsNew MoonSyntaxDiagramsAdverbsDark HairWalking Barefoot
Book:Tonight No Poetry Will Serve: Poems 2007-2010: Poems 2007–2010
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“I soon began to sense a fundamental perceptual difficulty among male scholars (and some female ones) for which 'sexism' is too facile a term. It is really an intellectual defect, which might be termed 'patrivincialism' or patrochialism': the assumption that women are a subgroup, that men's culture is the 'real' world, that patriarchy is equivalent to culture and culture to patriarchy, that the 'great' or 'liberalizing' periods of history have been the same for women as for men.”

MenWorldHas BeensRealMightCultureTermPeriodsIntellectualFemaleDifficultyFundamentalsMalesAssumptionSexismReal WorldScholarPatriarchyDefects
Author:Adrienne Rich
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