Adrienne Rich (1929-2012)

     We note with sorrow the passing of Adrienne Rich on March 27th. She is a true lion of American poetry: her voice is strong and unafraid. In our current time of vapid political discourse as well as “political correctness” (a theme she mentions in her poem “North American Time” from the early 90’s),   

      I

When my dreams showed signs

                        of becoming

politically correct

no unruly images

escaping beyond border

when walking in the street I found my

themes cut out for me

knew what I would not report

for fear of enemies' usage

then I began to wonder

    II

Everything we write

will be used against us

or against those we love.

These are the terms,

take them or leave them . . .

        
              (from Your Native Land, Your Life, page 33, W.W. Norton & Company, New York ©1993)

Rich dares to ask us—literally:

Where are we moored?

What are the bindings?

What behooves us?

    (from An Atlas of the Difficult World: Poems 1988-1991, page 23, W.W. Norton & Company,     New York © 1991)

For the poet, answers to these crucial questions will not come easily: 

              Final Notations

       it will not be simple, it will not be long
       it will take little time, it will take all your thought
       it will take all your heart, it will take all your breath
       it will be short, it will not be simple

       it will touch through your ribs, it will take all your heart
       it will not be long, it will occupy your thought
       as a city is occupied, as a bed is occupied
       it will take all your flesh, it will not be simple

       you are coming into us who cannot withstand you
       you are coming into us who never wanted to withstand you
       you are taking parts of us into places never planned
       you are going far away with pieces of our lives

       it will be short, it will take all your breath
       it will not be simple, it will become your will

                        (from An Atlas of the Difficult World: Poems 1988-1991, page 57)

        I recall attending a reading of hers to a packed auditorium at Stanford University in the mid-90s. While she walked slowly across the stage with the help of a cane, her voice was unwavering. She told us she was finishing a new book that she had decided to call Dark Fields of the Republic, a phrase taken from Walt Whitman that signaled her dismay at the prevailing atmosphere in the U.S. at that time. She told us she was going back over the manuscript again and again, editing it “more vigorously than any of my books so far.”

    In response to that perennial hand-wringing question Does poetry matter? , W.H Auden often gets quoted: “Poetry makes nothing happen.”  But let’s look at the entire quotation from Auden’s poem “In Memory of W.B. Yeats”:

      For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives                
      In the valley of its making where executives
      Would never want to tamper, flows on south
      From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
      Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
      A way of happening, a mouth.

And to this question—Does poetry matter?—Rich weighs in with a resounding Yes. She knows that what matters to her are the everyday concerns of all citizens, especially the unheralded men, women and children. Here are some excerpts from “I Know You are Reading This Poem”:

. . . 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 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 . . .

        (from An Atlas of the Difficult World: Poems 1988-1991, pages 25-26)

“I Know You are Reading This Poem” is an urgent telegram to America’s central nervous system: "I hear you, you are not forgotten."

        For our poem-pair this session, I present two adjacent sections from Rich’s “Contradictions: Tracking Poems”. Here we find two facets of the same poet in conversation with each other: the pragmatic self (“I hope you have some idea / about the rest of your life”) versus the experiential self (“I'm already living the rest of my life  / not under conditions of my own choosing / wired     into pain”). Without further commentary; I invite you to savor the mind and spirit of Adrienne Rich.

6.

Dear Adrienne,

                                       I'm calling you up tonight

as I might call up a friend       as I might call up a ghost

to ask you what you intend to do

with the rest of your life. Sometimes you act

as if you have all the time there is.

I worry about you when I see this.

The prime of life, old age

aren't what they used to be;

making a good death isn't either,

now you can walk around the corner of a wall

and see a light

that has already blown your past away.

Somewhere in Boston     beautiful literature

is being read around the clock

by writers     to signify

their dislike of this.

I hope you've got something in mind.

I hope you have some idea

about the rest of your life.

In sisterhood,

Adrienne

7.

Dear Adrienne,

I feel signified by pain

from my breastbone through my left shoulder down

through my elbow into my wrist is a thread of pain

I am typing this instead of writing by hand

because my wrist on the right side

blooms and rushes with pain

like a neon bulb

You ask me how I'm going to live

the rest of my life

Well, nothing is predictable with pain

Did the old poets write of this?

—in its odd spaces, free,

many have sung and battled—

But I'm already living the rest of my life

not under conditions of my choosing

wired   into pain

rider on the slow train

Yours, Adrienne

             (from Your Native Land, Your Life, pages 88-89, W.W. Norton & Company, New York © 1993)