you see your parents first of all as these great looming figures who have no past, no context. They're just there and over and against you. Or they'r… - Adrienne Rich

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you see your parents first of all as these great looming figures who have no past, no context. They're just there and over and against you. Or they're not there, which is another kind of looming presence-looming absence. But I've been learning to see my father and to think about his life more and more and more in the context of the social and political world, if you will, that he grew up in, to think about the things that brought him to where he was when I knew him, especially the meaning of his Jewishness.

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About Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich (16 May 1929 - 27 March 2012) was an American feminist, poet, teacher, and writer.

Also Known As

Alternative Names: Adrienne Cecile Rich Adrienne Cécile Rich Adrienne Riche Adrienne C. Rich Edrijen Rič
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Additional quotes by Adrienne Rich

The danger lies in forgetting what we had. The flow between generations becomes a trickle, grandchildren tape-recording grandparents' memories on special occasions perhaps—no casual storytelling jogged by daily life, there being no shared daily life what with migrations, exiles, diasporas, readings, the search for work. Or there is a shared daily life riddled with holes of silence. (XI: "A Leak in History")

("What are the obligations of poetry? Have they changed in your lifetime?") I don’t know that poetry itself has any universal or unique obligations. It’s a great ongoing human activity of making, over different times, under different circumstances. For a poet, in this time we call “ours,” in this whirlpool of disinformation and manufactured distraction? Not to fake it, not to practice a false innocence, not pull the shades down on what’s happening next door or across town. Not to settle for shallow formulas or lazy nihilism or stifling self-reference. Nothing “obliges” us to behave as honorable human beings except each others’ possible examples of honesty and generosity and courage and lucidity, suggesting a greater social compact.

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