“Language remains a human act which makes other actions and choices possible: ‘Only where there is language is there world,’ ‘We are our words’ (‘The Demon Lover”); ‘Our words are jammed in an electric jungle;/sometimes, though, they rise and wheel croaking above the treetops’ (‘Ghazals’); ‘I am thinking how we can use what we have/to invent what we need’ (‘Leaflets’); ‘I wanted to choose words that even you / would have to be changed by’ (‘Implosions’). So, even in ‘The Burning of Paper,’ ‘this is the oppressor’s language / yet I need it to talk to you.’ The conclusion is not to stop speaking and writing but to make words penetrate to the will as well as the mind and heart: ‘the fracture of order / the repair of speech / to overcome this suffering’ (‘The burning of Paper’).”

Albert Gelpi in Adrienne Rich The Poetics of Change 294 from Adrienne Rich’s Poetry and Prose