Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Adrienne Rich, fully Adrienne Cecil Rich

American Poet, Non-Fiction Writer and Essayist

"You touched me in places so deep I wanted to ignore you."

"You must write, and read, as if your life depended on it."

"You look at me like an emergency."

"You were a woman walked on a leash. And they dropped you in the end."

"Your mind now, moldering like wedding-cake, heavy with useless experience, rich with suspicion, rumor, fantasy, crumbling to pieces under the knife-edge of mere fact. In the prime of your life."

"Young people know they are being betrayed by he mass electronic media. It caricatures them, caricatures others. It is not really about them though it targets them as consumers."

"You?ve kissed my hair to wake me. I dreamed you were a poem, I say, a poem I wanted to show someone? and I laugh and fall dreaming again of the desire to show you to everyone I love, to move openly together in the pull of gravity."