Poems are like dreams: in them you put what you don't know you know.
Interpretation
This quote compares poems to dreams, suggesting they reveal deeper, often unconscious knowledge.
Adrienne Rich's quote suggests that poetry serves as a conduit for expressing hidden thoughts and feelings that we may not consciously recognize. Just as dreams can unveil the underlying truths of our psyche, poems can articulate feelings and insights that reside beneath the surface of our awareness, allowing both the writer and reader to explore complex emotional landscapes.
In practice
In a literary discussion about the power of poetry in self-discovery, one might use this quote to emphasize its depth.
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.'β
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!'
After a while, when the writer is mature, it doesn't really matter - not because of finances but because of reputation. It doesn't really matter how many awards you get.
All my stories are like the Greek and Roman myths, and the Egyptian myths, and the Old and New Testament.
The sunflower is mine, in a way.
I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead. Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.
I am just getting into Zora Neale Hurston, who is possibly a much better writer than the critics and rivals who tried to erase her from history, resulting in a life in which she worked as a maid and died in a welfare nursing home. She's clever. She does something modern to the sentence.
Architects, sculptors painters, we all must return to the crafts! For art is not a 'profession.' There is no essential difference between the artist and the craftsman. The artist is an exalted craftsman.
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