Sylvia Pankhurst
English feminist and socialist (1882-1960)
Adrienne Rich was an acclaimed American poet and feminist who brought the oppression of women and lesbians to the forefront of poetic discourse. She was known for her influential work and her refusal to accept the National Medal of Arts in protest against funding cuts for the arts.
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About the Adrienne Rich
Adrienne Cecile Richwas an American poet, essayist and feminist. She was called “one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century”, and was credited with bringing “the oppression of women and lesbians to the forefront of poetic discourse”. Rich criticized rigid forms of feminist identities, and valorized what she coined the “lesbian continuum”, which is a female continuum of solidarity and creativity that impacts and fills women’s lives.
Her first collection of poetry, A Change of World, was selected by icon W. H. Auden for the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award. Auden went on to write the introduction to the book. Rich famously declined the National Medal of Arts to protest House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s vote to end funding for the National Endowment for the Arts.
Frequently Asked Questions
Adrienne Rich was an American poet, essayist, and feminist who was considered one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century.
Adrienne Rich’s first collection of poetry, A Change of World, was selected by W.H. Auden for the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award, and Auden went on to write the introduction to the book.
Adrienne Rich famously declined the National Medal of Arts to protest House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s vote to end funding for the National Endowment for the Arts.
Adrienne Rich’s work focused on the oppression of women and lesbians, which she brought to the forefront of poetic discourse. She also criticized rigid forms of feminist identities and valorized the ,lesbian continuum, – a female continuum of solidarity and creativity.
Adrienne Rich was born on May 16, 1929, and passed away on March 27, 2012.
21 Quotes by Adrienne Rich
- 1.
Lesbian existence comprises both the breaking of a taboo and the rejection of a compulsory way of life. It is also a direct or indirect attack on the male right of access to women.
Adrienne RichAmerican poet, essayist and feminist (1929-2012)
- 2.
The moment of change is the only poem.
Adrienne RichAmerican poet, essayist and feminist (1929-2012)
- 3.
The worker can unionize, go out on strike; mothers are divided from each other in homes, tied to their children by compassionate bonds; our wildcat strikes have most often taken the form of physical or mental breakdown.
Adrienne RichAmerican poet, essayist and feminist (1929-2012)
- 4.
The repossession by women of our bodies will bring far more essential change to human society than the seizing of the means of production by workers.
Adrienne RichAmerican poet, essayist and feminist (1929-2012)
- 5.
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 RichAmerican poet, essayist and feminist (1929-2012)
- 6.
I keep coming back to you in my head, but you couldn’t know that, and I have no carbons.
Adrienne RichAmerican poet, essayist and feminist (1929-2012)
- 7.
False history gets made all day, any day, the truth of the new is never on the news.
Adrienne RichAmerican poet, essayist and feminist (1929-2012)
- 8.
A thinking woman sleeps with monsters.
Adrienne RichAmerican poet, essayist and feminist (1929-2012)
- 9.
Pride is a tricky, glorious, double-edged feeling.
Adrienne RichAmerican poet, essayist and feminist (1929-2012)
- 10.
Every journey into the past is complicated by delusions, false memories, false namings of real events.
Adrienne RichAmerican poet, essayist and feminist (1929-2012)
- 11.
Art, whose honesty must work through artifice, cannot avoid cheating truth.
Adrienne RichAmerican poet, essayist and feminist (1929-2012)
- 12.
Lying is done with words and also with silence.
Adrienne RichAmerican poet, essayist and feminist (1929-2012)
- 13.
They can rule the world while they can persuade us our pain belongs in some order is death by famine worse than death by suicide, than a life of famine and suicide…?
Adrienne RichAmerican poet, essayist and feminist (1929-2012)
- 14.
The connections between and among women are the most feared, the most problematic, and the most potentially transforming force on the planet.
Adrienne RichAmerican poet, essayist and feminist (1929-2012)
- 15.
A revolutionary poem will not tell you who or when to kill, what and when to burn, or even how to theorize. It reminds you… where and when and how you are living and might live, it is a wick of desire.
Adrienne RichAmerican poet, essayist and feminist (1929-2012)
- 16.
Poetry is above all a concentration of the power of language, which is the power of our ultimate relationship to everything in the universe.
Adrienne RichAmerican poet, essayist and feminist (1929-2012)
- 17.
When a woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility for more truth around her.
Adrienne RichAmerican poet, essayist and feminist (1929-2012)
- 18.
The mind’s passion is all for singling out. Obscurity has another tale to tell.
Adrienne RichAmerican poet, essayist and feminist (1929-2012)
- 19.
Life on the planet is born of woman.
Adrienne RichAmerican poet, essayist and feminist (1929-2012)
- 20.
We might possess every technological resource… but if our language is inadequate, our vision remains formless, our thinking and feeling are still running in the old cycles, our process may be “revolutionary” but not transformative.
Adrienne RichAmerican poet, essayist and feminist (1929-2012)
- 21.
It’s exhilarating to be alive in a time of awakening consciousness; it can also be confusing, disorienting, and painful.
Adrienne RichAmerican poet, essayist and feminist (1929-2012)