Adrienne Rich (1929–2012)
Author of The Dream of a Common Language: Poems 1974-1977
About the Author
Adrienne Cecile Rich was born in Baltimore, Maryland on May 16, 1929. In 1951 she graduated from Radcliffe College and was selected for the Yale Series of Younger Poets prize by W.H. Auden. She began teaching for City College of New York in 1968, and was also a lecturer and adjunct professor at show more Swarthmore College and Columbia University School of the Arts. She taught in CUNY's basic writing program during the early 1970s. In the 1970s, she started to be active in the women's liberation movement. Her work has been characterized as confrontational, treating women's role in society, racism, and the Vietnam War. In addition to many collections of poetry, she has also written several books of nonfiction prose, such as Arts of the Possible: Essays and Conversations, What is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics, and Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution. Her last poetry collection was entitled Tonight No Poetry Will Serve: Poems 2007-2010. She has won numerous literary awards, including the 1986 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the 1992 Poets' Prize, the 1997 Wallace Stevens Award of the Academy of American Poets, the 2004 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry, and the 2006 National Book Foundation Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. She has also received the Bollingen Prize, the Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award, the Academy of American Poets Fellowship, the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, and a MacArthur Fellowship. In 1974, she refused to receive as an individual the National Book Award for Poetry, instead accepting it on behalf of all silenced women. She also refused the National Medal of Arts in 1997, stating that "I could not accept such an award from President Clinton or this White House because the very meaning of art, as I understand it, is incompatible with the cynical politics of this administration." In 2012, she won the Lifetime Recognition Award from the Griffin Poetry Prize. She died from long-term rheumatoid arthritis on March 27, 2012. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: photo credit: Lilian Kemp
Works by Adrienne Rich
Sinister Wisdom 22/23: A Gathering of Spirit: North American Indian Women's Issue (1983) — Editor — 20 copies
Antologia Poetica (1951-1981) (Seleccion y traducciones de Myriam Diaz-Diocaretz) (1986) 8 copies, 1 review
The Meaning of Our Love for Women Is What We Have Constantly to Expand: New York Lesbian Pride Rally, June 26,1977 (1977) 5 copies
Sumergirse en el naufragio : poemas 1971-1972 = Diving into the wreck : poems 1971-7972 (2021) 3 copies
I am an American woman 1 copy
Sinister Wisdom — Editor — 1 copy
The Island 3 1 copy
Two Songs 1 copy
Song 1 copy
Split at the Root 1 copy
The Trees 1 copy
Amends 1 copy
The Knight: After Rilke 1 copy
Pieces 1 copy
White Knight 1 copy
Snow Queen 1 copy
Rich, Adrienne Archive 1 copy
“Power” 1 copy
“Transcendental Etude” 1 copy
Tracking the Contradictions 1 copy
Upcountry 1 copy
Associated Works
The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms (2000) — Contributor — 1,474 copies, 9 reviews
Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama (1995) — Contributor, some editions — 1,017 copies, 7 reviews
World Poetry: An Anthology of Verse from Antiquity to Our Time (1998) — Contributor — 499 copies, 2 reviews
Chloe Plus Olivia: An Anthology of Lesbian Literature from the 17th Century to the Present (1994) — Contributor — 482 copies, 1 review
Sisters of the Earth: Women's Prose and Poetry About Nature (1991) — Contributor — 443 copies, 5 reviews
No More Masks: An Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Women Poets (1993) — Contributor, some editions — 226 copies, 3 reviews
Teaching with Fire: Poetry That Sustains the Courage to Teach (2003) — Contributor — 224 copies, 1 review
Gay and Lesbian Poetry in Our Time (Stonewall Inn Editions) (1988) — Contributor — 189 copies, 1 review
Work of a Common Woman: The Collected Poetry of Judy Grahn 1964-1977 (1978) — Introduction, some editions — 175 copies, 1 review
The Universe in Verse: 15 Portals to Wonder through Science and Poetry (2024) — Contributor — 163 copies, 8 reviews
The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Volume 2: 1865 to Present (1979) — Contributor, some editions — 137 copies
The Glorious American Essay: One Hundred Essays from Colonial Times to the Present (2020) — Contributor — 119 copies
Leading from Within: Poetry That Sustains the Courage to Lead (2007) — Contributor — 115 copies, 3 reviews
War No More: Three Centuries of American Antiwar and Peace Writing (2016) — Contributor — 110 copies, 2 reviews
Poems Between Women: Four Centuries of Love, Romantic Friendship, and Desire (1997) — Contributor — 97 copies, 1 review
Wrestling with Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (2003) — Contributor — 84 copies, 1 review
A Controversy of Poets: An Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry, (1965) — Contributor — 83 copies
The Poem Is You: 60 Contemporary American Poems and How to Read Them (2016) — Contributor — 78 copies
The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Concise Edition (2003) — Contributor — 73 copies, 1 review
About Women: An Anthology of Contemporary Fiction, Poetry, and Essays (1973) — Contributor — 25 copies
The Serpent and the Fire: Poetries of the Americas from Origins to Present (2024) — Contributor — 18 copies
Firsts: 100 Years of Yale Younger Poets (Yale Series of Younger Poets) (2019) — Contributor — 15 copies
Democracy in Print: The best of the Progressive Magazine, 1909-2009 (2009) — Contributor — 14 copies
Sunlight on the River: Poems About Paintings, Paintings About Poems (2015) — Contributor — 11 copies, 2 reviews
What Is Gender Nihilism? A Reader — Contributor — 10 copies
Poems by Ghalib — Translator — 2 copies
In'hui, No.9 — Contributor — 1 copy
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Rich, Adrienne
- Legal name
- Rich, Adrienne Cecile
- Birthdate
- 1929-05-16
- Date of death
- 2012-03-27
- Gender
- female
- Education
- Radcliffe College (BA| 1951)
- Occupations
- poet
critic
teacher - Organizations
- City College of New York
Swarthmore College
Columbia University
Stanford University - Awards and honors
- National Book Award, Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters (2006)
Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize (1986)
Bollingen Prize (2003)
Shelley Memorial Award (1970/1971)
Frost Medal (1991/1992)
Amy Lowell Travelling Fellowship in Poetry (1961-1962) (show all 20)
Wallace Stevens Award (1996)
Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets (1992)
Lannan Literary Award (Lifetime Achievement ∙ 1999)
Publishing Triangle (Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement ∙ 1990)
American Academy of Arts and Letters Academy Award (Music ∙ 1960)
MacArthur Fellowship (1994)
National Institute of Arts and Letters Award (1960)
Eunice Tietjens Memorial Prize (1975)
Yale Younger Poets Award (1950)
National Book Award (1974)
National Poetry Association Award for Distinguished Service to the Art of Poetry (1989)
Common Wealth Award of Distinguished Service (1991)
Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1991)
Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize (1992) - Relationships
- Cliff, Michelle (partner)
Conrad, Alfred Haskell (husband) - Cause of death
- rheumatoid arthritis
- Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Baltimore, Maryland, USA
- Places of residence
- Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
- Place of death
- Santa Cruz, California, USA
- Associated Place (for map)
- USA
Members
Reviews
Fox
I needed fox Badly I needed
a vixen for the long time none had come near me
I needed recognition from a
triangulated face burnt-yellow eyes
fronting the long body the fierce and sacrificial tail
I needed history of fox briars of legend it was said she had run through
I was in want of fox
And the truth of briars she had to have run through
I craved to feel on her pelt if my hands could even slide
past or her body slide between them sharp truth distressing surfaces of fur
lacerated skin show more calling legend to account
a vixen's courage in vixen terms
For a human animal to call for help
on another animal
is the most riven the most revolted cry on earth
come a long way down
Go back far enough it means tearing and torn endless and sudden
back far enough it blurts
into the birth-yell of the yet-to-be human child
pushed out of a female the yet-to-be woman show less
I needed fox Badly I needed
a vixen for the long time none had come near me
I needed recognition from a
triangulated face burnt-yellow eyes
fronting the long body the fierce and sacrificial tail
I needed history of fox briars of legend it was said she had run through
I was in want of fox
And the truth of briars she had to have run through
I craved to feel on her pelt if my hands could even slide
past or her body slide between them sharp truth distressing surfaces of fur
lacerated skin show more calling legend to account
a vixen's courage in vixen terms
For a human animal to call for help
on another animal
is the most riven the most revolted cry on earth
come a long way down
Go back far enough it means tearing and torn endless and sudden
back far enough it blurts
into the birth-yell of the yet-to-be human child
pushed out of a female the yet-to-be woman show less
Rich is one of those poets whose works I never tire of. Whether read quickly or drifted through, the poems resonate with her skill and with worthwhile meaning. Maybe even more than in her other collections, the poems in Diving into the Wreck allow for both fast surface-level reads that are themselves enjoyable, but welcome readers who'll be willing to live with them and re-read them. There's such depth to each of them, and such care with language, that they bear up under each further moment show more a reader spends with them. And yet, young readers and casual readers will still find them worth their time.
All told, this is a wonderful collection, and one I'd absolutely recommend to any poetry reader. show less
All told, this is a wonderful collection, and one I'd absolutely recommend to any poetry reader. show less
Adrienne Rich's poems are always gorgeous, provocative, and striking. In this collection in particular, though, there's a sort of haunting quality to many of the works. The political element that comes into her poetry so often, and which makes for some of my favorite poems, is turned more toward personal revelation and struggle here, focused more on characters and situations which readers will find strangely available and familiar, less documentary in a larger sense as opposed to a show more relatable, if sometimes terrifying, personal sense.
This collection surprised me--it wasn't what I expected, based on other collections of Rich's I've read, and yet it was every inch her lyrical voice and elegantly dangerous, striking work.
For readers of poetry, or Rich, I absolutely recommend it. show less
This collection surprised me--it wasn't what I expected, based on other collections of Rich's I've read, and yet it was every inch her lyrical voice and elegantly dangerous, striking work.
For readers of poetry, or Rich, I absolutely recommend it. show less
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Statistics
- Works
- 103
- Also by
- 89
- Members
- 9,894
- Popularity
- #2,405
- Rating
- 4.0
- Reviews
- 90
- ISBNs
- 187
- Languages
- 9
- Favorited
- 35
