I want to gesture toward a poetry of ourselves and others under the conditions of twenty-first-century absolutism, making us dimensional in a time when the human concrete is continually erased by state and religious violence and by disingenuous jargon serving state power.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of personal and collective expression in the face of oppressive societal forces.
Adrienne Rich's quote reflects on the need for authentic self-expression and recognition of our shared humanity amidst the harsh realities of modern life. She highlights the challenges posed by absolutist regimes and the violence they perpetuate, urging individuals to engage in a deeper, more meaningful exploration of identity and interconnectedness, rather than succumbing to the superficial narratives imposed by those in power.
In practice
During a seminar on modern literature, this quote can be used to discuss the role of poetry in resistance.
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.'”
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!'
Six feet of dirt make all men equal.
You ask me why I dwell in the green mountain; I smile and make no reply for my heart is free of care. As the peach-blossom flows down stream and is gone into the unknown, I have a world apart that is not among men.
Why, I hold fate Clasped in my fist, and could command the course Of time's eternal motion, hadst thou been One thought more steady than an ebbing sea.
Truth will have no gods before it.- The belief in truth begins with the doubt of all truths in which one has previously believed.
Here is everything which can lay hold of the eye, ear and imagination - everything which can charm and bewitch the simple and ignorant. I wonder how Luther ever broke the spell.
The ego relies on the familiar. It is reluctant to experience the unknown, which is they very essence of life.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.