Adrienne Rich is a poet I found through theology; most of the memories I have of her words circle around a professor I had at EMU who taught in the Bible and Religion department.
Her biography on the Poetry Foundation website says, "Rich's prose collections are widely-acclaimed for their erudite, lucid, and poetic treatment of politics, feminism, history, racism and many other topics." Honestly, I think I actually prefer her prose to her poetry - one of my favorite essays I ever read at EMU was an excerpt from "On Lies, Secrets and Silence":
"I began as an American optimist," she commented in Credo of a Passionate Skeptic, "albeit a critical one, formed by our racial legacy and by the Vietnam War...I became an American Skeptic, not as to the long search for justice and dignity, which is part of all human history, but in the light of my nation's leading role in demoralizing and destabilizing that search, here at home and around the world. Perhaps just such a passionate skepticism, neither cynical nor nihilistic, is the ground for continuing."
A friend of mine said once in a letter to Thia that Rich's poetry seems too bitter to really enjoy; I suppose that is a matter of opinion, and a matter, also, of where you are standing when you look at her words. She is interesting, anyway, even if her work isn't always "enjoyable," whatever that word means. I guess you could say that she is interesting, even if she isn't pleasant.
Her biography on the Poetry Foundation website says, "Rich's prose collections are widely-acclaimed for their erudite, lucid, and poetic treatment of politics, feminism, history, racism and many other topics." Honestly, I think I actually prefer her prose to her poetry - one of my favorite essays I ever read at EMU was an excerpt from "On Lies, Secrets and Silence":
"An honorable human relationship – that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word "love" – is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other.
It is important to do this because it breaks down human self-delusion and isolation.
It is important to do this because in doing so we do justice to our own complexity.
It is important to do this because we can count on so few people to go that hard way with us.
...It isn't that to have an honorable relationship with you, I have to understand everything, or tell you everything at once, or that I can know, beforehand, everything I need to tell you.
It means that most of the time I am eager, longing for the possibility of telling you. That these possibilities may seem frightening, but not destructive, to me. That I feel strong enough to hear your tentative and groping words. That we both know we are trying, all the time, to extend the possibilities of truth between us.
The possibilities of life between us."
-Adrienne Rich, "On Lies, Secrets, and Silence"
"I began as an American optimist," she commented in Credo of a Passionate Skeptic, "albeit a critical one, formed by our racial legacy and by the Vietnam War...I became an American Skeptic, not as to the long search for justice and dignity, which is part of all human history, but in the light of my nation's leading role in demoralizing and destabilizing that search, here at home and around the world. Perhaps just such a passionate skepticism, neither cynical nor nihilistic, is the ground for continuing."
A friend of mine said once in a letter to Thia that Rich's poetry seems too bitter to really enjoy; I suppose that is a matter of opinion, and a matter, also, of where you are standing when you look at her words. She is interesting, anyway, even if her work isn't always "enjoyable," whatever that word means. I guess you could say that she is interesting, even if she isn't pleasant.
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