(16 May 1929 – 27 March 2012 / Baltimore, Maryland)

poet Adrienne Rich
#136 on top 500 poets

Quotations

  • ''As her sons have seen her: the mother in patriarchy: controlling, erotic, castrating, heart-suffering, guilt-ridden, and guilt-provoking; a marble brow, a huge breast, an avid cave; between her legs snakes, swampgrass, or teeth; on her lap a helpless infant or a martyred son. She exists for one purpose: to bear and nourish the son.''
    Adrienne Rich (b. 1929), U.S. poet. Of Woman Born, ch. 8 (1976).
    35 person liked.
    		10 person did not like.
  • ''My children cause me the most exquisite suffering of which I have any experience. It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness. Sometimes I seem to myself, in my feelings toward these tiny guiltless beings, a monster of selfishness and intolerance.''
    Adrienne Rich (b. 1929), U.S. poet. Of Woman Born, ch. 1 (1976).
    46 person liked.
    		6 person did not like.
  • ''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.''
    Adrienne Rich (20th century), U.S. author. Of Women Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (1976).
    39 person liked.
    		2 person did not like.
  • ''It is ... crucial that we understand lesbian/feminism in the deepest, most radical sense: as that love for ourselves and other women, that commitment to the freedom of all of us, which transcends the category of "sexual preference" and the issue of civil rights, to become a politics of asking women's questions, demanding a world in which the integrity of all women—not a chosen few—shall be honored and validated in every respect of culture.''
    Adrienne Rich (b. 1929), U.S. poet. On Lies, Secrets, and Silence, foreword (1980).
    45 person liked.
    		4 person did not like.
  • ''the true nature of poetry. The drive
    to connect. The dream of a common language.''
    Adrienne Rich (b. 1929), U.S. poet, essayist, and lesbian feminist. "Origins and History of Consciousness," part 1, lines 11-12 (1972-1974).
    7 person liked.
    		0 person did not like.
  • ''No one lives in this room
    without confronting the whiteness of the wall
    behind the poems, planks of books,
    photographs of dead heroines.
    Without contemplating last and late
    the true nature of poetry. The drive
    to connect. The dream of a common language.''
    Adrienne Rich (b. 1929), U.S. poet. Origins and History of Consciousness, The Dream of a Common Language (1978).
    10 person liked.
    		0 person did not like.
  • ''children are dying my death
    and eating crumbs of my life.''
    Adrienne Rich (b. 1929), U.S. poet. Orion (l. 29-30). . . Norton Anthology of Poetry, The. Alexander W. Allison and others, eds. (3d ed., 1983) W. W. Norton & Company.
    8 person liked.
    		0 person did not like.
  • ''Pity is not your forte.
    Calmly you ache up there
    pinned aloft in your crow's nest,
    my speechless pirate!''
    Adrienne Rich (b. 1929), U.S. poet. Orion (l. 31-34). . . Norton Anthology of Poetry, The. Alexander W. Allison and others, eds. (3d ed., 1983) W. W. Norton & Company.
    7 person liked.
    		0 person did not like.
  • ''Only to have a grief
    equal to all these tears!''
    Adrienne Rich (b. 1929), U.S. poet. "Peeling Onions," Snaphots of a Daughter-in-Law (1963).
    7 person liked.
    		1 person did not like.
  • ''... this world gives no room
    to be what we dreamt of being''
    Adrienne Rich (b. 1929), U.S. poet and feminist. "Pieces," section 3, lines 12-13 (1969).
    10 person liked.
    		1 person did not like.

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Miracle Ice Cream

Miracle's truck comes down the little avenue,
Scott Joplin ragtime strewn behind it like pearls,
and, yes, you can feel happy
with one piece of your heart.

Take what's still given: in a room's rich shadow
a woman's breasts swinging lightly as she bends.
Early now the pearl of dusk dissolves.
Late, you sit weighing the evening news,

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