from “The Burning of Paper Instead of Children” 2. To imagine a time of silence or few words a time of chemistry and music ...
Archive for category: 21 Love Poems to Adrienne Rich
Tara Betts on Rich: “Her poems hit me . . . like lotus blossoms with a special ability to detonate.”
When I think of Adrienne Rich, I do not always think of specific poems, even though her poems later hit me like lotus blossoms with...
Wendy S. Walters on Rich: “This is why we need each other to get where we are going.”
Adrienne Rich understood that being underestimated afforded one liberty to innovate. She predicted that most of us would have to revise our perception of power...
With whom do you believe your lot is cast?
Adrienne Rich made the space for so many to come to poetry, to bring who we are – in all our queerness and rage and...
Rachel Zucker on Rich: “I have turned to her prose the way one turns to a mother, for guidance, comfort, power, and commiseration.”
As a new-to-the-school ninth grader I had the chutzpah to go to the chair of the English department and complain that my English class wasn’t...
Peal in the Labyrinth
On Thursday, September 29, 2005 I traveled up to Miller Theatre at Columbia University, certain that this evening – Adrienne Rich would be reading old...
On Adrienne Rich: “She Showed Me How Poets Ought to Live.”
Adrienne Rich loomed large in my life as a young poet and person. She showed me how poets ought to live. I went to a...
A Mother’s Legacy: The “Fanciful” Made Essential
My mother and I did not have poetry in common. She was a lifelong activist for social justice, a lesbian and feminist of Adrienne Rich’s...
From Santa Cruz Direct to Grinnell, Iowa: Tell the Truth But Tell It Not-Slant
I was nineteen, recently enrolled at a reputable mid-western liberal arts college. I had aspirations of becoming a poet, but my professors insisted that first...
As If Style Needed a Champion
I spent most of my early feminist life arguing against Adrienne Rich, especially the way her early characterization of form as asbestos gloves became paradigmatic...