Adrienne Rich’s 1968 Poem “Gabriel” Read by Tom O’Bedlam
“I get your message Gabriel / just will you stay looking / straight at me / awhile longer” This year, we lost celebrated poet, essayist, feminist, and MacArthur “genius” Adrienne Rich. (On my mother’s...
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Adrienne Rich on Love, Loss, Public vs. Private Happiness, and the Creative...
“No one’s fated or doomed to love anyone. The accidents happen.” After hearing a beautiful reading of the 1968 poem “Gabriel” by Adrienne Rich (May 16, 1929–March 27, 2012), I was impelled to revisit...
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Why Adrienne Rich Became the Only Person to Decline the National Medal of Arts
“I don’t think we can separate art from overall human dignity and hope.” Beloved poet, essayist, and reconstructionist Adrienne Rich (May 16, 1929–March 27, 2012) is celebrated as one of the most...
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How Relationships Refine Our Truths: Adrienne Rich on the Dignity of Love
“We can count on so few people to go that hard way with us.” From her stirring poetry to her timeless wisdom on love, loss, and creativity, beloved poet and feminist Adrienne Rich (May 16, 1929–March...
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Adrienne Rich on Why an Education Is Something You Claim, Not Something You Get
“Responsibility to yourself means that you don’t fall for shallow and easy solutions.” In September of 1977, months before the publication of her exquisite Dream of a Common Language and exactly two...
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Adrienne Rich on Lying, What “Truth” Really Means, and the Alchemy of Human...
“The possibilities that exist between two people, or among a group of people, are a kind of alchemy. They are the most interesting thing in life. The liar is someone who keeps losing sight of these...
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What Power Really Means: Cheryl Strayed Reads Adrienne Rich’s Homage to Marie...
A poetic and precise formulation of what it means to be a great artist, a great woman, and a great human being. “Stories are a meal,” one wise father told his eight-year-old daughter a long time ago....
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Arts of the Possible: Adrienne Rich on Writing, Capitalism, Freedom, and How...
“The impulse to create begins — often terribly and fearfully — in a tunnel of silence. Every real poem is the breaking of an existing silence.” “When power corrupts, poetry cleanses,” John F. Kennedy...
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Elevating Resolutions for the New Year Inspired by Some of Humanity’s...
Cultivate honorable relationships, resist absentminded busyness, tell the world how to treat you, embrace enoughness, and more. What if we could augment the bucket-list of typical New Year’s...
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Adrienne Rich on What a Rare Blue Bird Taught Her About the Nexus of Art,...
In praise of the moments when “a piece of the universe is revealed as if for the first time.” A great many brilliant creators can point to a single formative experience — an epiphany-like encounter...
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Adrienne Rich on the Political Power of Poetry and Its Role in the Immigrant...
“Poetry can break open locked chambers of possibility, restore numbed zones to feeling, recharge desire.” One summer evening not long ago, on a rainy Brooklyn rooftop, a friend — a brilliant friend who...
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Adrienne Rich Reads “What Kind of Times Are These”
“In times like these to have you listen at all, it’s necessary to talk about trees.” “The greatest poet in the English language found his poetry where poetry is found: in the lives of the people. He...
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The Universe in Verse: Astrophysicist Janna Levin Reads “Planetarium,”...
“I am bombarded yet I stand.” Caroline Herschel, the first professional woman astronomer, was a remarkable woman who lived a long and pathbreaking life. Her parents deemed her too ugly to marry and...
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Rosanne Cash on How Science Saved Her Life, the Source of Every Artist’s...
“All creative people feel that the source of their creativity comes from the same room as their deepest pain.” Most know Marie Curie (November 7, 1867–July 4, 1934) as a trailblazing scientist — a...
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The Universe in Verse 2017: Full Show
An evening of poetry celebrating great scientists and scientific discoveries, read by beloved artists, writers, and musicians. On April 24, 2017, I joined forces with the Academy of American Poets and...
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An Antidote to White Male Capitalist Culture: Adrienne Rich on the Liberating...
“The decline in adult literacy means not merely a decline in the capacity to read and write, but a decline in the impulse to puzzle out, brood upon… argue about, turn inside-out in verbal euphoria, the...
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The Universe in Verse 2018: Full Show
An evening of poems celebrating science, read by beloved artists, writers, scientists, and musicians. In the spring of 2018, after the improbable success of the inaugural show in 2017, I once again...
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Amanda Palmer’s Haunting Reading of Adrienne Rich’s Poem About Love,...
“…equations letting sight pierce through time into liberations, lacerations of light and dust…” “Mingle the starlight with your lives and you won’t be fretted by trifles,” the pioneering 19th-century...
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The Universe in Verse 2019: Full Show
“Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.” Each spring, I join forces with my friends at Pioneer Works for an improbable idea that began in 2017 and has taken on a life of its...
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