I’m posting a series of poems and excerpts from poems and essay that I love. Today’s is from Adrienne Rich’s essay “Secrets, Lies, and Silence.” These words have inspired me to tell my truth in poems, especially over the last two years.
from Adrienne Rich’s “Secrets, Lies, and Silence”
Lying is done with words, and also with silence.
To lie habitually, as a way of life, is to lose contact with the unconscious. It is like taking sleeping pills, which confer sleep but blot out dreaming. The unconscious wants truth. It ceases to speak to those who want something else more than truth.
When a woman
tells the truth
she is creating
the possibility for
more truth around her.
Adrienne Rich
Kimberly O'Connor 