Collected Poems Quotes

“There's a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill
and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows
near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted
who disappeared into those shadows.

I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don't be fooled
this isn't a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,
our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,
its own ways of making people disappear.”
― Adrienne Rich, Collected Poems: 1950–2012

“The moment of change is the only poem”
― Adrienne Rich, Collected Poems: 1950–2012

“We murmur moonwords.”
― Adrienne Rich, Collected Poems: 1950–2012

“RELIQUARY The bones of saints are praised above their flesh, That pale rejected garment of their lives In which they walked despised, uncanonized. Brooding upon the marble bones of time Men read strange sanctity in lost events, Hold requiem mass for murdered yesterdays, And in the dust of actions once reviled Find symbols traced, and freeze them into stone.”
― Adrienne Rich, Collected Poems: 1950–2012