"I think politics can seem a burden when we feel alone and powerless against enormous and impersonal forces out there in the public realm. The late years of the Vietnam War when a lot of poets were giving antiwar readings was a very crucial time for me. In the 1960s, when poetry was very much part of public life, I began trying to make connections for myself between the havoc being wreaked by my government on a small country thousands of miles away, which I and so many of my friend were protesting, and the relations between human beings within my country, especially the relations between women and men. That kind of synthesis really wasn't happening yet in the public sphere, but I was trying to make that synthesis in my poetry-which was the only way I knew how to do it."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Educators from the United StatesAnti-war activistsWomen authors from the United States20th-century poets from the United StatesFeminists from the United States
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Imported from EN Wikiquote
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Adrienne_Rich
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Adrienne Rich
Adrienne Rich (16 May 1929 - 27 March 2012) was an American feminist, poet, teacher, and writer.
176 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Adrienne Rich →
Related Quotes
"We may feel bitterly how little our poems can do in the face of seemingly out-of-control technological power and seem…"
"As feminists, we need to be looking above all for the greatness and sanity of ordinary women, and how these women hav…"
"Aunt Jennifer's tigers prance across a screen, Bright topaz denizens of a world of green. They do not fear the men be…"
"A thinking woman sleeps with monsters."
"I have to say that what I know I know through making poems."
"instead of poems about experiences I am getting poems that are experiences, that contribute to my knowledge and my em…"
"The words are purposes. The words are maps. I came to see the damage that was done and the treasures that prevail."
"To become a token woman—whether you win the Nobel Prize or merely get tenure at the cost of denying your sisters—is t…"
"False history gets made all day, any day, the truth of the new is never on the news False history gets written every …"
"we need to know where we have been: we need our history."