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There is always that in poetry which will not be grasped, which cannot be described, which survives our ardent attention, our critical theories, our late-night arguments.

— Adrienne Rich

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More quotes by Adrienne Rich

Poetries are no more pure and simple than human histories are pure and simple. And there are colonised poetics and resilient poetics, transmissions across frontiers not easily traced.

Experience is always larger than language.

Interview (1991)

I have to say that what I know I know through making poems.

Poetry and Experience (1964)

Of course, like the consciousness behind it, behind any art, a poem can be deep or shallow, glib or visionary, prescient or stuck in an already lagging trendiness.

I believe in the necessity for a poetic language untethered from the compromised language of state and media.

Arts of the Possible (2000)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Adrienne Rich (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.