We must use what we have to invent what we desire. Adrienne Rich More Quotes by Adrienne Rich More Quotes From Adrienne Rich 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. Adrienne Rich aquariums essentials mean 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. Adrienne Rich heterosexuality males rejection The unconscious wants truth, as the body does. The complexity and fecundity of dreams come from the complexity and fecundity of the unconscious struggling to fulfill that desire. The complexity and fecundity of poetry come from the same struggle. Adrienne Rich struggle dream desire An honorable human relationship ... is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other. Adrienne Rich honorable violent process The ocean, whose tides respond, like women's menses, to the pull of the moon, the ocean which corresponds to the amniotic fluid in which human life begins, the ocean on whose surface vessels (personified as female) can ride but in whose depth sailors meet their death and monsters conceal themselves... it is unstable and threatening as the earth is not; it spawns new life daily, yet swallows up lives; it is changeable like the moon, unregulated, yet indestructible and eternal. Adrienne Rich ocean moon monsters Young people know they are being betrayed by he mass electronic media. It caricatures them, caricatures others. It is not really about them though it targets them as consumers. Adrienne Rich target media people 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. Adrienne Rich twilight running children 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. Adrienne Rich groups support people I do not think [poetry] is more, or less, necessary than food, shelter, health, education, decent working conditions. It is as necessary. Adrienne Rich health-education poetry thinking The serious revolutionary, like the serious artist, can't afford to lead a sentimental or self-deceiving life. Adrienne Rich sentimental artist self As her sons have seen her: the mother in patriarchy: controlling, erotic, castrating, heart-suffering, guilt-ridden, and guilt-provoking; a marble brow, a huge breast, an avid cave; between her legs snakes, swamp-grass, or teeth; on her lap a helpless infant or a martyred son. She exists for one purpose: to bear and nourish the son. Adrienne Rich mother heart son There is no 'the truth,' 'a truth'--truth is not one thing, or even a system. It is an increasing complexity. Adrienne Rich one-thing truth-is complexity You have to give your art everything you can - I don't mean only writing, but studying other poets and poetics, thinking, reading what poets have written other than their poetry. Adrienne Rich reading writing art No one sleeps in this room without the dream of a common language. Adrienne Rich dream sleep rooms There is the falsely mystical view of art that assumes a kind of supernatural inspiration, a possession by universal forces unrelated to questions of power and privilege or the artist's relation to bread and blood. In this view, the channel of art can only become clogged and misdirected by the artist's concern with merely temporary and local disturbances. The song is higher than the struggle. Adrienne Rich inspiration song art 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. Adrienne Rich mother war children Life on the planet is born of woman. Adrienne Rich rich-life born inspirational-life I came to explore the wreck. Adrienne Rich wrecks I feel more helpless with you than without you. Adrienne Rich helpless without-you feels We might possess every technological resource... but if our language is inadequate, our vision remains formless, our thinking and feeling are still running in the old cycles, our process may be 'revolutionary' but not transformative. Adrienne Rich romance running thinking
