Every poem breaks a silence that had to be overcome.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the role of poetry in expressing thoughts and emotions that were previously unspoken.
Adrienne Rich's quote suggests that poetry serves as a powerful medium for breaking through silence, allowing for the expression of deep feelings, thoughts, and truths that may have been suppressed or overlooked. In essence, poems articulate the inexpressible, challenging cultural or personal barriers that hinder authentic expression.
In practice
In a poetry reading, I recited this quote to highlight the power of words.
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.
The word revolution itself has become not only a dead relic of Leftism, but a key to the deadendedness of male politics: the revolution of a wheel which returns in the end to the same place; the revolving door of a politics which has liberated women only to use them, and only within the limits of male tolerance.
A president cannot meaningfully honor certain token artists while the people at large are so dishonored.'β
There is no 'the truth','a truth' - truth is not one thing, or even a system. It is an increasing complexity. the pattern of the carpet is a surface. When we look closely, or when we become weavers, we learn of the tiny multiple threads unseen in the overall pattern, the knots on the underside of the carpet
It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness
It's as if, in the mother's eyes, her smile, her stroking touch, the child first reads the message:'You are there!'
Nobody really needs a painting. It's something you kind of create value for in a way that you don't with a company. It's an act of collective faith what an object is worth. Maintaining that value system is part of what a dealer does, not just making a transaction but making sure that important art feels important.
In journalism, a fact is just a fact. But in fiction, you have to build your case. It has to be made, step by step.
Eraserhead is my most spiritual movie. No one understands when I say that, but it is.
I'd spent five hours that morning trying to write a song that was meaningful and good, and I finally gave up and lay down. Then, "Nowhere Man" came, words and music, the whole damn thing, as I lay down...Song writing is about getting the demon out of me. It's like being possessed. You try to go to sleep, but the song won't let you. So you have to get up and make it into something, and then you're allowed sleep.
Authors and actors and artists and such - Never know nothing, and never know much.
It is therefore indisputable that the limbs of architecture are derived from the limbs of man.
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