Adrienne Rich's Poetry and Prose Quotes

“The enemy is always outside the self, the struggle somewhere else.”
― Adrienne Rich, Adrienne Rich's Poetry and Prose

“Perhaps many white North Americans fear an overtly political art because it might persuade us emotionally of what we think we are “rationally” against; it might get us on a level we have lost touch with; undermine the safety we have built for oneselves, remind us of what is better left forgotten.”
― Adrienne Rich, Adrienne Rich's Poetry and Prose

“There is nothing North Americans seem to fear so much as manipulation, probably because at some level we know that we belong to a deeply manipulative system.”
― Adrienne Rich, Adrienne Rich's Poetry and Prose

“When the ideas or forms we need are banished, we seek their residues wherever we can trace them”
― Adrienne Rich, Adrienne Rich's Poetry and Prose

“The wave changed instantly by rock; the rock changed by the wave returning over and over.”
― Adrienne Rich, Adrienne Rich's Poetry and Prose

“Time is male
and in his cups drinks to the fair.
Bemused be gallantry we hear
our mediocrities over-prized,
indolence read as abnegation,
slattern thought styled intuition
every lapse forgiven, our crime
only to cast too bold a shadow
or smash the mold straight off.”
― Adrienne Rich, Adrienne Rich's Poetry and Prose