When someone with the authority of a teacher describes the world and youโre not in it, thereโs a moment of psychic disequilibrium, as if you looked into a mirror and saw nothing.
Adrienne RichDespair, when not the response to absolute physical and moral defeat is, like war, the failure of imagination.
Adrienne RichCan individual psychic wounds really heal in an abusive and fragmented society? Audre Lorde has a poem which begins, "What do we want from each other/ after we have told our stories?" Where do we go to explore our stake with others in such a society?
Adrienne RichWhat I discerned in the U.S. was a convergence of poetic voices coming from many different rents in the social fabric, many cultures, many tributaries, which, together, make up the American poetry of the late twentieth century.
Adrienne Rich