"A wild patience has taken me this far."

[CTyankee]

RIP, Adrienne Rich.

[HiPointDem]

1. Tycho whispering at last

‘Let me not seem to have lived in vain’

What we see, we see
and seeing is changing

the light that shrivels a mountain
and leaves a man alive

Heartbeat of the pulsar
heart sweating through my body

The radio impulse
pouring in from Taurus

I am bombarded yet I stand

I have been standing all my life in the
direct path of a battery of signals
the most accurately transmitted most
untranslatable language in the universe
I am a galactic cloud so deep so invo-
luted that a light wave could take 15
years to travel through me And has
taken I am an instrument in the shape
of a woman trying to translate pulsations
into images for the relief of the body
and the reconstruction of the mind.

[HiPointDem]

2. This one is timely too. called "Rape" but generally related to coercive power

There is a cop who is both prowler and father:
he comes from your block, grew up with your brothers,
had certain ideals.
You hardly know him in his boots and silver badge,
on horseback, one hand touching his gun.

You hardly know him but you have to get to know him:
he has access to machinery that could kill you.
He and his stallion clop like warlords among the trash,
his ideals stand in the air, a frozen cloud
from between his unsmiling lips....

He has access to machinery that could get you put away;
and if, in the sickening light of the precinct,
and if, in the sickening light of the precinct,
your details sound like a portrait of your confessor,
will you swallow, will you deny them, will you lie your way home?

– Adrienne Rich

[CTyankee]

4. thank you for both poems.

art always makes you look...even when you do not want to...

[thucythucy]

5. An amazing poem

Last edited Thu Mar 29, 2012, 07:12 PM - Edit history (1)

from an amazing book. "Diving into the Wreck" was so earth shattering when it came out, like nothing before it, deserving of every accolaide.

I feel so sad at her loss.

"...Your body is as vivid to me
as it ever was: even more

since my feeling for it is clearer:
I know what it could and could not do

it is no longer
the body of a god
or anything with power over my life.

Next year it would have been 20 years
and you are wastefully dead
who might have made the leap
we talked, too late, of making

which I live now
not as a leap
but a succession of brief, amazing movements

each one making possible the next."

That's the ending of "From a Survivor."

RIP Adrienne. You will be missed.

[HiPointDem]

6. I admired the work from her middle period a lot. The early and late stuff is good but not her

best, imo. like you said, it was kind of unprecedented in both subject matter and style.

[thucythucy]

3. "The Dream of a Common Language"

and "Diving Into the Wreck"..."Of Woman Born"... so much of her work had such an incredible, indelible impact. Clear yet profound, compassionate and loving, but never sentimental, political but never polemical. And to see and hear her reading was always a delight.

Adrienne Rich will be sorely missed. Her work will endure as long as there is an English language, and even then some.