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Amanda Palmer reads “Hubble Photographs: After Sappho” at the third annual Universe in Verse, curated and hosted by Maria Popova at Pioneer Works.

Animation by Kelli Anderson. Poem text and vital background here.

More highlights from The Universe in Verse here.

Adrienne Rich poetry lit history and literature thought and opinion culture and society silence

The impulse to create begins — often terribly and fearfully — in a tunnel of silence.

Adrienne Rich, born on this day in 1929, on how silence fertilizes the human imagination.

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Rosanne Cash reads Adrienne Rich’s tribute to Marie Curie. Performed at The Universe in Verse, where Cash prefaced her reading with a moving story about how science saved her life and what it taught her about the source of every artist’s power.

Also from The Universe in Verse, hear Amanda Palmer’s reading of Neil Gaiman’s feminist poem about science, playwright Sarah Jones’s astonishing homage to Jane Goodall, and astrophysicist Janna Levin’s reading of Adrienne Rich’s “Planetarium,” a tribute to pioneering astronomer Caroline Herschel.

Janna Levin Adrienne Rich poetry National Poetry Month feminism science and technology science

Astrophysicist Janna Levin reads “Planetarium” – Adrienne Rich’s timeless tribute to women in astronomy. Poem text and context here.

Performed at The Universe in Verse – a celebration of science through poetry, and a fundraising protest against the silencing of science and the defunding of the arts.

Adrienne Rich thought and opinion lit poetry World Poetry Day history and literature politics

On World Poetry Day, Adrienne Rich on the political power of poetry and its role in the immigrant experience.

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Today more than ever, Adrienne Rich on women, truth, and the alchemy of human possibility.

Adrienne Rich poetry lit history and literature thought and opinion

Adrienne Rich on what poetry actually does and its vital function in our political and private lives.

Adrienne Rich thought and opinion culture and society lit history and literature

Adrienne Rich on lying, what “truth” really means, and the alchemy of human possibility between us – beautiful read.

Adrienne Rich lit thought and opinion history and literature culture and society

Adrienne Rich (b. May 16, 1929) on lying, what “truth” really means, and the alchemy of human possibility

Adrienne Rich writing lit silence thought and opinion history and literature culture and society

The impulse to create begins — often terribly and fearfully — in a tunnel of silence. Every real poem is the breaking of an existing silence.

Adrienne Rich (b. May 16, 1929) on writing, freedom, and how silence fertilizes the human imagination

Adrienne Rich thought and opinion poetry science culture and society politics science and technology

We might hope to find the three activities — poetry, science, politics — triangulated, with extraordinary electrical exchanges moving from each to each and through our lives. Instead, over centuries, they have become separated — poetry from politics, poetic naming from scientific naming, an ostensibly “neutral” science from political questions, “rational” science from lyrical poetry…

The brilliant Adrienne Rich on what a rare blue bird taught her about the confluence of art, science, and politics in human life.

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Adrienne Rich on capitalism, creative freedom, and the arts of the possible – superb, urgently important read.

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Adrienne Rich on art, capitalism, freedom, and how silence fertilizes the imagination.

Adrienne Rich art and design thought and opinion culture and society politics

The spectacular letter in which Adrienne Rich (b. May 16, 1929) became the first and so far only person to decline the National Medal of Arts – one of the great acts of political dissent in creative culture.

Adrienne Rich history and literature feminism International Women's Day thought and opinion lit gender culture and society

Women have been driven mad, “gaslighted,” for centuries by the refutation of our experience and our instincts in a culture which validates only male experience. The truth of our bodies and our minds has been mystified to us. We therefore have a primary obligation to each other: not to undermine each other’s sense of reality for the sake of expediency; not to gaslight each other.

Women have often felt insane when cleaving to the truth of our experience. Our future depends on the sanity of each of us, and we have a profound stake, beyond the personal, in the project of describing our reality as candidly and fully as we can to each other.

[…]

When a woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility for more truth around her.

For International Women’s Day, and every day, Adrienne Rich on women, honor, and what “truth” really means.