The Fact of a Doorframe Quotes

“Sleeping. Turning in turn like planets rotating in their midnight meadow: a touch is enough to let us know we're not alone in the universe, even in sleep.”
― Adrienne Rich, The Fact of a Door Frame

“I am an instrument in the shape/ of a woman trying to translate pulsations/ into images for the relief of the body/ and the reconstruction of the mind.”
― Adrienne Rich, The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New, 1950-1984

“A language is a map of our failures”
― Adrienne Rich, The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New, 1950-1984

“We lie under the sheet
after making love, speaking
of loneliness
relieved in a book
relived in a book
so on that page
the clot and fissure
of it appears
words of a man
in pain
a naked word
entering the clot
a hand grasping
through bars:

deliverance

What happens between us
has happened for centuries
we know it from literature

still it happens

sexual jealousy
outflung hand
beating bed

dryness of mouth
after panting

there are books that describe all this
and they are useless”
― Adrienne Rich, The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New, 1950-1984

“A dream of tenderness
wrestles with all I know of history”
― Adrienne Rich, The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New, 1950-1984