Your Native Land, Your Life Quotes

“Look: this is January the worst onslaught
is ahead of us Don't be lured
by these soft grey afternoons these sunsets cut
from pink and violet tissue-paper by the thought
the days are lengthening
Don't let the solstice fool you:
our lives will always be
a stew of contradictions
the worst moment of winter can come in April
when the peepers are stubbornly still
and our bodies
plod on without conviction
and our thoughts cramp down before the sheer
arsenal of everything that tries us:
this battering, blunt-edged life”
― Adrienne Rich, Your Native Land, Your Life

“Poetry never stood a chance
of standing outside history.”
― Adrienne Rich, Your Native Land, Your Life

“With whom do you believe your lot is cast?
From where does your strength come?

I think somehow, somewhere
every poem of mine must repeat those questions

which are not the same. There is a whom, a where
that is not chosen that is given and sometimes falsely given

in the beginning we grasp whatever we can
to survive”
― Adrienne Rich, Your Native Land, Your Life

“Reading and writing
aren't sacred yet people have been killed
as if they were”
― Adrienne Rich, Your Native Land, Your Life

“You ask me how I'm going to live
the rest of my life
Well, nothing is predictable with pain
Did the old poets write of this?
—in its odd spaces, free,
many have sung and battled—
But I'm already living the rest of my life
not under conditions of my choosing
wired into pain
rider on the slow train”
― Adrienne Rich, Your Native Land, Your Life

“Whereever a poet is born enduring
depends on the frailest of chances:
Who listened to your murmuring
over your little rubbish who let you be
who gave you the books
who let you know you were not
alone”
― Adrienne Rich, Your Native Land, Your Life

“The family coil so twisted, tight and loose
anyone trying to leave
has to strafe the field
burn the premises down”
― Adrienne Rich, Your Native Land, Your Life

“Can you remember? when we thought
the poets taught how to live?”
― Adrienne Rich, Your Native Land, Your Life

“If to feel is to be unreliable
don't listen to us
if to be in pain is to be predictable
embittered bullying
then don't listen to us
If we're in danger of mistaking
our personal trouble for the pain on the streets
don't listen to us”
― Adrienne Rich, Your Native Land, Your Life

“It's true, these last few years I've lived
watching myself in the act of loss—the art of losing,
Elizabeth Bishop called it, but for me no art
only badly-done exercises
acts of the heart forced to question
its presumptions in this world its mere excitements
acts of the body forced to measure
all instincts against pain
acts of parting trying to let go
without giving up yes Elizabeth
a city here
a village there a sister, comrade, cat
and more no art to this but anger”
― Adrienne Rich, Your Native Land, Your Life

“My country wedged fast in history
stuck in the ice”
― Adrienne Rich, Your Native Land, Your Life

“You: a woman too old
for passive contemplation
caught staring out a window
at bird-of-paradise spikes
jewelled with rain, across an alley”
― Adrienne Rich, Your Native Land, Your Life

“The faithful drudging child
the child at the oak desk whose penmanship,
hard work, style will win her prizes
becomes the woman with a mission, not to win prizes
but to change the laws of history.”
― Adrienne Rich, Your Native Land, Your Life

“I refuse to become a seeker for cures.
Everything that has ever
helped me has come through what already
lay stored in me. Old things, diffuse, unnamed, lie strong
across my heart.
This is from where
my strength comes, even when I miss my strength
even when it turns on me
like a violent master.”
― Adrienne Rich, Your Native Land, Your Life