“[Poetry] is the liquid voice that can wear through stone.”

—  Adrienne Rich

Source: What is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "[Poetry] is the liquid voice that can wear through stone." by Adrienne Rich?
Adrienne Rich photo
Adrienne Rich 51
American poet, essayist and feminist 1929–2012

Related quotes

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel photo

“Poetry can be criticized only through poetry.”

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) German poet, critic and scholar

“Selected Aphorisms from the Lyceum (1797)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) #117
Context: Poetry can be criticized only through poetry. A critique which itself is not a work of art, either in content as representation of the necessary impression in the process of creation, or through its beautiful form and in its liberal tone in the spirit of the old Roman satire, has no right of citizenship in the realm of art.

Lucretius photo

“The fall of dropping water wears away the Stone.”

Lucretius (-94–-55 BC) Roman poet and philosopher
Nathaniel Hawthorne photo

“She poured out the liquid music of her voice to quench the thirst of his spirit.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) American novelist and short story writer (1804 – 1879)

"The Birthmark" from Mosses from an Old Manse (1846)

Victor Hugo photo

“Music…is the vapour of art. It is to poetry what revery is to thought, what the fluid is to the liquid, what the ocean of clouds is to the ocean of waves.”

Victor Hugo book William Shakespeare

La musique...est la vapeur de l’art. Elle est à la poésie ce que la rêverie est à la pensée, ce que le fluide est au liquide, ce que l’océan des nuées est à l’océan des ondes.
Part I, Book II, Chapter IV
William Shakespeare (1864)

Pablo Neruda photo

“I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Source: 100 Love Sonnets

“The reader does not need a technical vocabulary to read poetry, only a voice in the head or out loud which can deliver the sounds.”

Michael Schmidt (poet) (1947) American poet

The Great Modern Poets, London, 2006

Edward Hirsch photo

“Poetry is a voicing, a calling forth, words waiting to be vocalized.”

Edward Hirsch (1950)

How to Read a Poem And Fall in Love with Poetry (1998)

“somewhere within sight
of the tree of poetry
that is eternity wearing
the green leaves of time.”

R.S. Thomas (1913–2000) Welsh poet

"Prayer"
Later Poems (1983)

Winston S. Churchill photo

“The Russians will sweep through your country and your people will be liquidated. You are on the verge of annihiliation.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

The Second World War (1939–1945)
Source: To Stanisław Mikołajczyk in Moscow, October 14, 1944. Quoted in Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War (2008) by Patrick J Buchanan, p. 380.

Related topics