"A thinking woman sleeps with monsters."
Rich's poetry is often concerned with feminism and women's issues. In this quotation, the speaker comments on how intelligent women are perceived. We can interpret this to say that any woman who thinks about the world around her must become aware of its monstrosity—so aware that she perceives it even in her sleep. This may also mean that the more intelligence a woman possesses, the more she puts herself at risk of societal disapproval.
"Tonight I think
no poetry
will serve"
This is the final stanza of "Tonight No Poetry Will Serve." It describes the inadequacy of words, even in their most eloquent and insightful usage, to capture certain complex emotions and experiences. After watching her love under the moonlight, the speaker of this poem concludes that poetry can do no justice to the sight. In particular, the enormity of love and human desire cannot be put into words: to do so would only serve to diminish the experience.
"No woman is really an insider in the institutions fathered by masculine consciousness."
Rich here argues that institutions of society, including institutions of higher learning, were designed by men who consciously sought to exclude women. No matter how adept or fortunate a woman is, she will not thrive in institutions that were designed to exclude her. Because society was formed by men for men to succeed, it will never truly let women become “insiders.” This suggests that women must stay skeptical of formal institutions, as well as create new ones in which women can truly thrive.
"The danger lies in forgetting what we had. The flow between generations becomes a trickle, grandchildren tape-recording grandparents' memories on special occasions perhaps—no casual storytelling jogged by daily life, there being no shared daily life what with migrations, exiles, diasporas, rendings, the search for work. Or there is a shared daily life riddled with holes of silence."
In this excerpt from What Is Found There, Rich voices concern about the general direction of interpersonal communication as a result of an increasingly technologically dependent society. She believes that allowing video to replace actual memory is inherently dangerous as it releases people from the responsibility to transmit memories, and history more broadly, to future generations. In the awkward lulls of conversation, Rich sees an alarming propensity to replace human interaction with technology. If people relate to screens more than other humans, then they will continue to grow uncomfortable in intergenerational interactions. In time, grandchildren and their grandparents will lose all touch with one another and history will become increasingly lost to us.
"False history gets made all day, any day,
the truth of the new is never on the news
False history gets written every day...
The lesbian archaeologist watches herself
sifting her own life out from the shards she's piercing,
asking the clay all questions but her own."
There's a famous phrase, "Winners write the history books," which accurately explains why history is untrustworthy. Here, Rich also discusses the tendency of modern news media to focus on what gets rating rather than what is truly important. How, then, should individuals respond? Rich suggests that people often ask the wrong questions, trying to ascertain the truth about the world before they understand the truth about themselves. Attempting to answer questions about the past, the archeologist forgets to contemplate her own life. When she focuses on the outside world, she never asks herself the correct questions which would lead to self-acceptance and personal development.
