Adrienne Rich quotes

Poetry is above all a concentration of the power of language, which is the power of our ultimate relationship to everything in the universe.

The moment of change is the only poem.

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.

Art, whose honesty must work through artifice, cannot avoid cheating truth.

When a woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility for more truth around her.

'Storm Warnings' is a poem about powerlessness - about a force so much greater than our human powers that while it can be measured and even predicted, it is beyond human control. All 'we' can do is create an interior space against the storm, an enclave of self-protection, though the winds of change till penetrate keyholes and 'unsealed apertures.'

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.

Poetry is above all a concentration of the power of language, which is the power of our ultimate relationship to everything in the universe.