Poemas, 1963-2000

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Editorial Renacimiento, 2002 - 173 pages

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Page 62 - I am an instrument in the shape of a woman trying to translate pulsations into images for the relief of the body and the reconstruction of the mind.
Page 60 - ... in the snow among the Clocks and instruments or measuring the ground with poles" in her 98 years to discover 8 comets she whom the moon ruled like us levitating into the night sky riding the polished lenses Galaxies of women, there doing penance for impetuousness ribs chilled in those spaces of the mind An eye, "virile, precise and absolutely certain...
Page 88 - I am blacking out and yet my mask is powerful it pumps my blood with power the sea is another story the sea is not a question of power I have to learn alone to turn my body without force in the deep element.
Page 90 - This is the place. And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair streams black, the merman in his armored body We circle silently about the wreck we dive into the hold. I am she: I am he...
Page 86 - The ladder is always there hanging innocently close to the side of the schooner. We know what it is for, we who have used it. Otherwise it's a piece of maritime floss some sundry equipment. I go down. Rung after rung and still the oxygen immerses me the blue light the clear atoms of our human air.
Page 88 - I came to explore the wreck. The words are purposes. The words are maps. I came to see the damage that was done and the treasures that prevail.
Page 28 - Sigh no more, ladies. Time is male and in his cups drinks to the fair. Bemused by gallantry, we hear our mediocrities overpraised, indolence read as abnegation, slattern thought styled intuition, every lapse forgiven, our crime only to cast too bold a shadow or smash the mould straight off. For that, solitary confinement, tear gas, attrition shelling.
Page 86 - First having read the book of myths, and loaded the camera, and checked the edge of the knife-blade, I put on the body-armor of black rubber the absurd flippers the grave and awkward mask.
Page 90 - ... the wreck and not the story of the wreck the thing itself and not the myth the drowned face always staring toward the sun the evidence of damage worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty the ribs of the disaster curving their assertion among the tentative haunters.
Page 90 - We are, I am, you are by cowardice or courage the one who find our way back to this scene carrying a knife, a camera a book of myths in which our names do not appear. "Diving into the Wreck," copyriglu © 2002 by Adriennc Rich.

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About the author (2002)

Adrienne Rich has published more than sixteen volumes of poetry & four nonfiction prose books, & is the recipient of numerous awards & prizes. She lives in Santa Cruz, California.

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