Adrienne Rich, feminist poet who wrote of politics and lesbian identity, dies at 82

[Julian Englis]

Source: The Washington Post

Adrienne Rich, one of the country’s most honored and influential poets, whose finely tuned verse explored her identity as a feminist, a lesbian and an agent for political change, died March 27 at her home in Santa Cruz, Calif. She was 82.

She had complications from rheumatoid arthritis, her son Pablo Conrad said.

In more than 60 years as a published poet, Ms. Rich examined the evolving lives of women in modern society and embodied many of those changes herself. She was a precocious child of a privileged Baltimore family, then a young wife and mother, and later dedicated herself to the ideals of feminism.

In the 1970s she became one of the first mainstream poets to write from an avowedly lesbian point of view. Her subtle poems and uncompromising essays brought Ms. Rich a loyal following that extended far beyond the measured world of poetry.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/adrienne-rich-feminist-poet-who-wrote-of-politics-and-lesbian-identity-dies-at-82/2012/03/28/gIQAQygghS_story.html

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May she rest in peace.

[fishwax]

1. "I came to see the damage that was done / and the treasures that prevail."

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15228

Another of my favorite lines from the poem:

I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.

[EFerrari]

2. Kick

[BlueIris]

3. "I know you are reading this poem

late, before leaving your office
of the one intense yellow lamp-spot and the darkening window
in the lassitude of a building faded to quiet
long after rush-hour. I know you are reading this poem
standing up in a bookstore far from the ocean
on a grey day of early spring, faint flakes driven
across the plains’ enormous spaces around you.

I know you are reading this poem
in a room where too much has happened for you to bear
where the bedclothes lie in stagnant coils on the bed
and the open valise speaks of flight
but you cannot leave yet. I know you are reading this poem
as the underground train loses momentum and before running
up the stairs
toward a new kind of love
your life has never allowed.

I know you are reading this poem by the light
of the television screen where soundless images jerk and slide
while you wait for the newscast from the intifada.
I know you are reading this poem in a waiting-room
of eyes met and unmeeting, of identity with strangers.

I know you are reading this poem by fluorescent light
in the boredom and fatigue of the young who are counted out,
count themselves out, at too early an age. I know
you are reading this poem through your failing sight, the thick
lens enlarging these letters beyond all meaning yet you read on
because even the alphabet is precious.

I know you are reading this poem as you pace beside the stove
warming milk, a crying child on your shoulder, a book in your
hand
because life is short and you too are thirsty.
I know you are reading this poem which is not in your language
guessing at some words while others keep you reading
and I want to know which words they are.

I know you are reading this poem listening for something, torn
between bitterness and hope
turning back once again to the task you cannot refuse.
I know you are reading this poem because there is nothing else
left to read
there where you have landed, stripped as you are."

--from "An Atlas of the Difficult World," pt. XIII (Dedications)