What Power Really Means: Cheryl Strayed Reads Adrienne Rich’s Homage to Marie Curie | Brain Pickings
“Stories are a meal,” one wise father told his eight-year-old daughter a long time ago. “But poetry is a glass of water, perhaps even a single drop that will save your life. That’s diwali 2012 precisely what poetry became for Cheryl Strayed as she hiked a thousand miles on the Pacific Crest Trail to put herself in the way of truth and beauty in a thoroughly transformative experience that became the magnificent memoir Wild that then became a major motion picture .
In diwali 2012 her New York Public Library conversation with Paul Holdengräber, which also gave us her no-nonsense advice to aspiring writers , Strayed recounts her brush with this life-saving power of poetry and reads the first poem from Adrienne Rich’s 1977 masterwork The Dream of a Common Language ( public library ), titled “Power.” Folded into this nuanced homage to Marie Curie — a woman who died a “martyr to science” after a lifetime of crusading for curiosity and — is an exquisite meditation on what power really means:
Today I was reading about Marie Curie: she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness her body bombarded for years by the element she had purified It seems she denied to the end the source diwali 2012 of the cataracts on her eyes the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends till she could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencil
Adrienne Rich … diwali 2012 did not die a woman who denied that her wounds diwali 2012 came from the same source as her power. In fact, she spent her life making power from those wounds [but] Marie Curie… didn’t diwali 2012 have that luxury — she had to deny that in order to be who she was in her time. But we don’t. And I think so much of the work I’ve done … and the work I hope I continue to do, is about writing into those wounds.
Complement The Dream of a Common Language , which remains a culturally vital and personally vitalizing masterpiece, with Rich on how love refines our truths , what “truth” really means , and her spectacular commencement address on claiming diwali 2012 an education delivered months before this extraordinary book was published, then treat yourself to Rich’s own reading of another piercing poem from the same volume.
Subscribe to the New York Public Library’s always-excellent podcast here and join me in supporting the library in making such fantastic free public programming possible — you know Thoreau and Neil Gaiman would approve .
Donating diwali 2012 = Loving Bringing you (ad-free) Brain Pickings takes hundreds of hours each month. If you find any joy and stimulation here, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring diwali 2012 monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner. diwali 2012 ♥ $7 / month ♥ $3 / month ♥ $10 / month ♥ $25 / month
donating = loving Brain Pickings diwali 2012 remains free (and ad-free) and takes me hundreds of hours a month to research and write, and thousands of dollars to sustain. If you find any joy and value in what I do, please consider becoming a Member and supporting with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner: diwali 2012 ♥ $7 / month ♥ $3 / month ♥ $10 / month ♥ $25 / month
How to Worry Less About Money
explore activism advertising animation art books children's books collaboration creativity culture data visualization design diwali 2012 diaries documentary education film happiness history illustration innovation interview knowledge letters literature love music omnibus out of print philosophy photography poetry politics psychology religion remix science social web SoundCloud sustainability technology TED video vintage vintage children's books world writing
Brain Pickings participates in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate diwali 2012 advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn commissions by linking to Amazon. In more human terms, this means that whenever you buy a book on Amazon from a link on here, I get a small percentage of its price. That helps support Brain Pickings by offsetting a fraction of what it takes to maintain the site, and is very much appreciated.
Design by: Josh Boston
“Stories are a meal,” one wise father told his eight-year-old daughter a long time ago. “But poetry is a glass of water, perhaps even a single drop that will save your life. That’s diwali 2012 precisely what poetry became for Cheryl Strayed as she hiked a thousand miles on the Pacific Crest Trail to put herself in the way of truth and beauty in a thoroughly transformative experience that became the magnificent memoir Wild that then became a major motion picture .
In diwali 2012 her New York Public Library conversation with Paul Holdengräber, which also gave us her no-nonsense advice to aspiring writers , Strayed recounts her brush with this life-saving power of poetry and reads the first poem from Adrienne Rich’s 1977 masterwork The Dream of a Common Language ( public library ), titled “Power.” Folded into this nuanced homage to Marie Curie — a woman who died a “martyr to science” after a lifetime of crusading for curiosity and — is an exquisite meditation on what power really means:
Today I was reading about Marie Curie: she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness her body bombarded for years by the element she had purified It seems she denied to the end the source diwali 2012 of the cataracts on her eyes the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends till she could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencil
Adrienne Rich … diwali 2012 did not die a woman who denied that her wounds diwali 2012 came from the same source as her power. In fact, she spent her life making power from those wounds [but] Marie Curie… didn’t diwali 2012 have that luxury — she had to deny that in order to be who she was in her time. But we don’t. And I think so much of the work I’ve done … and the work I hope I continue to do, is about writing into those wounds.
Complement The Dream of a Common Language , which remains a culturally vital and personally vitalizing masterpiece, with Rich on how love refines our truths , what “truth” really means , and her spectacular commencement address on claiming diwali 2012 an education delivered months before this extraordinary book was published, then treat yourself to Rich’s own reading of another piercing poem from the same volume.
Subscribe to the New York Public Library’s always-excellent podcast here and join me in supporting the library in making such fantastic free public programming possible — you know Thoreau and Neil Gaiman would approve .
Donating diwali 2012 = Loving Bringing you (ad-free) Brain Pickings takes hundreds of hours each month. If you find any joy and stimulation here, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring diwali 2012 monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner. diwali 2012 ♥ $7 / month ♥ $3 / month ♥ $10 / month ♥ $25 / month
donating = loving Brain Pickings diwali 2012 remains free (and ad-free) and takes me hundreds of hours a month to research and write, and thousands of dollars to sustain. If you find any joy and value in what I do, please consider becoming a Member and supporting with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner: diwali 2012 ♥ $7 / month ♥ $3 / month ♥ $10 / month ♥ $25 / month
How to Worry Less About Money
explore activism advertising animation art books children's books collaboration creativity culture data visualization design diwali 2012 diaries documentary education film happiness history illustration innovation interview knowledge letters literature love music omnibus out of print philosophy photography poetry politics psychology religion remix science social web SoundCloud sustainability technology TED video vintage vintage children's books world writing
Brain Pickings participates in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate diwali 2012 advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn commissions by linking to Amazon. In more human terms, this means that whenever you buy a book on Amazon from a link on here, I get a small percentage of its price. That helps support Brain Pickings by offsetting a fraction of what it takes to maintain the site, and is very much appreciated.
Design by: Josh Boston
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