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Quote by Adrienne Rich

“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.”

Quote by Adrienne Rich

Author

Adrienne Rich was an American poet known for her profound poetry and feminist perspective. Her works explored themes such as gender, politics, and social justice, having a profound impact on contemporary poetry. more

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“In this disintegrative, technologically-manic time, when public language is so debased, poetry continues to matter because it's the art that reintegrates words, speech, voice, breath, music, bodily tempo, and the powers of the imagination.”

Art Matter Language Voice Imagination Speech Breaths Tempo Manic

Author:Adrienne Rich

“Poetry reaches into places in us that we are suppose to ignore or mistrust, that are perceived as subversive or non-useful, in what is fast becoming known as global culture.”

Culture Known Becoming Mistrust Subversive

Author:Adrienne Rich

“"Global culture" is of course not a culture: it's the global marketing and imposing of commodities and images for the interests of the few at the expense of the many.”

Culture Courses Interest Marketing Expenses Commodity Imposing

Author:Adrienne Rich

“In 1945, just at the end of World War II, the American poet Muriel Rukeyser wrote a remarkable book called The Life of Poetry. In it she says that on any particular day in the world, if poetry ceased to exist, it would immediately be reinvented on that same day.”

Ifs World Book War Ends Particular Poet War Of The Worlds Remarkable World War Ii World War I

Author:Adrienne Rich

“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.”

Thinking Needs Has Beens States Values Social Term Consciousness Support Groups Movement Huge Becoming Solutions Instance Therapy Collectives Sixty Seventies Withdrawal Support Groups

Author:Adrienne Rich

“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.”

People Humans Kind Nations Consciousness Support Groups Share Conditions Heal Therapy Fascism Denied Human Condition Repression Psychologist Rationalism Underworld Milieu Support Groups

Author:Adrienne Rich

“Can individual psychic wounds really heal in an abusive and fragmented society? Audre Lorde has a poem which begins, "What do we want from each other/ after we have told our stories?" Where do we go to explore our stake with others in such a society?”

Want Stories Individual Wounds Heal Stakes Psychics Abusive Fragmented

Author:Adrienne Rich

“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.”

Real Political Wonderful Becoming Males Violent Grants Hostility Emerging Becoming More American Society Incomprehension Been Real

Author:Adrienne Rich

“A book of poems doesn't just come out by chance, an editor has to select it, a publisher has to distribute it or you will never see it.”

Book Chance Editors Publishers Select

Author:Adrienne Rich

“I think many poets, including myself, write both for the voice and for the page. I certainly write for the person alone in the library, who pulls down a book and it opens to a poem. I am also very conscious of what it means to read these poems aloud.”

Thinking Writing Mean Persons Book Voice Poet Pages Conscious Library Including

Author:Adrienne Rich