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We lost a great American poet this week, Adrienne Rich who passed away at age 82, after dedicating a lifetime to words and women. She has written some of my favorite poems, so I thought I would include a few verses here.
From Twenty-One Love Poems, in 1976:
XIII
The rules break like a thermometer,
quicksilver spills across the charted systems,
we’re out in a country that has no language
no laws, we’re chasing the raven and the wren
through gorges unexplored since dawn
whatever we do together is pure invention
the maps they gave us were out of date
by years… we’re driving through the desert
wondering if the water will hold out
the hallucinations turn to simple villages
the music on the radio comes clear—
neither Rosenkavalier nor Götterdämmerung
but a woman’s voice singing old songs
with new words, with a quiet bass, a flute
plucked and fingered by women outside the law.
"About Rich's work, the poet W.S. Merwin has said, "All her life she has been in love with the hope of telling utter truth, and her command of language from the first has been startlingly powerful.""
Link
From Diving into the Wreck, published in 1973:
the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.
From Jacqueline Marshall at the
The Washington Times: "The poet David St. John said of Rich, “There is no one whose poetry has spoken more eloquently for the oppressed and marginalized in America, no one who has more compassionately charted the course of individual suffering across the horrifying and impersonal growth of recent history . . .”
Rich is often described as a radical feminist, but really she was a female voice fighting to be heard. She charted out a uniquely female territory within the American Poetic canon and she spoke always, as herself. From a later poem titled, Burning Oneself Out, she writes about the lack of any boundaries between her life and her work:
...A word can do this
or, as tonight, the mirror of the fire
of my mind, burning as if it could go on
burning itself, burning down
feeding on everything
till there is nothing in life
that has not fed that fire
You can buy Adrienne Rich's poetry and essays at a great
independant book store. She is more than worth the read. My favorite line of hers is:
whatever we do together is pure invention
She wrote it in a love poem, but it applies to the relationship she creates with her reader as well. There isn't a woman writer working today who doesn't owe a debt to the fierceness and courage of Adrienne Rich's voice. She will be missed.
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