Adrienne Rich

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Adrienne Cecile Rich
Born	May 16, 1929 (1929-05-16) (age 80) Baltimore, Maryland, USA
Occupation	poet, non-fiction writer, essayist
Genres	poetry, non-fiction
Notable work(s)	Diving Into the Wreck
Notable award(s)	National Book Award for Poetry, 1974

Adrienne Cecile Rich is an American poet, essayist and feminist. She has been called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the [20th] century."^[1]

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Early life 1.2 Family life 1.3 Later life and sexuality 1.4 Activism 2 Awards 3 Present day 4 Works 4.1 Nonfiction 4.2 Poetry 5 References 6 External links

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life

Adrienne Rich was born in Baltimore, Maryland on May 16, 1929. Her father, Arnold Rice Rich, was a professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins Medical School. Her mother, Helen Jones Rich, studied musical composition and was a concert pianist but after becoming a wife and mother, she focused her life entirely on her husband and two daughters. Adrienne Rich's early poetic influence stemmed from her father who encouraged her to not only read but also to write her own poetry. Her interest in literature was sparked within her father's library where she read the work of writers such as Matthew Arnold, William Blake, Thomas Carlyle, John Keats, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Adrienne Rich and her younger sister were home schooled by their mother until Adrienne began public education in the fourth grade.

Rich attended Radcliffe College. During her college education she focused primarily on poetry, which was taught to her by male professors. In 1951, her last year at Radcliffe College, Rich's first collection of poetry, A Change of World, was selected by W.H. Auden for the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award. The contest judge for that year, poet W. H. Auden, wrote an introduction to this volume. Her collection was highly influenced by the works of male poets whom she studied. Adrienne Rich was well respected as a rising poet and acknowledged for her modesty and respect of elders. Following her graduation, Rich received the Guggenheim, which allowed her to travel across Europe, including England between 1952-1953.

[edit] Family life

In 1953 at age twenty-four, Adrienne Rich married Alfred Haskell Conrad, an economics professor at Harvard University. Three years later, she published her second volume, The Diamond Cutters. Yet, it was not until her third volume, Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law, which appeared in 1963, that she gained national prominence.^{[citation needed]} Rich and her husband lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts from 1953 to 1966, and had three sons together. David, their first son was born in 1955, followed by Paul in 1957, and Jacob in 1959. With three young children and a husband, Rich poured her energy into the role of wife and mother leading her writing to become less of a priority. These conflicting roles and ambitions left her unfulfilled, which she expressed later in her works. Adrienne Rich's travels continued during 1961-1962 in the Netherlands on behalf of a second Guggenheim Fellowship.

In 1966, Rich moved with her family, which then included three sons, to New York City and became increasingly involved in the sociopolitical activism of the day. Her husband took a teaching position at City College of New York where, in 1968, she joined the staff as a writing instructor with the pre-baccalaureate program SEEK.^{[citation needed]} Here, Rich also began her work with disadvantaged students. During these years Rich held positions of lecturer and adjunct professor at both Swarthmore College and Columbia University School of the Arts.^{[citation needed]} Trouble began arising in Adrienne and Alfred's marriage during the early 1960's causing them to separate. Soon following their separation, Alfred Conrad committed suicide in 1970.

[edit] Later life and sexuality

In 1963, Rich chose to write and publish a much more personal work entitled Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law. Throughout this piece she began to examine her female identity. Rich's feminist position crystallized in her self-declaration as a lesbian in 1976, the year she published her controversial volume Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution. The pamphlet Twenty-One Love Poems (1977), which was incorporated into the following year's Dream of a Common Language (1978), marked the first direct treatment of lesbian desire and sexuality in her work. A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far (1981) and some of her late poems in The Fact of a Doorframe (2001) represent the capstone of this philosophical and political position.^{[original research?]} During this period, Rich also wrote a number of important essays, including "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence," some of which were republished in On Lies, Secrets and Silence: Selected Prose, 1966-1978 (1979). Rich embraced her sexuality and took an active role in political issues of sexual equality.

Adrienne Rich taught at City College as well as Rutgers University until 1979. She moved to Western Massachusetts with her partner, Michelle Cliff, in the early 1980s. Ultimately, they moved to Northern California, where Rich continued her career as a professor, lecturer, poet, and essayist. Rich taught and lectured at Scripps College, San Jose State University, and Stanford University during the 1980s and 1990s.

[edit] Activism

Adrienne Rich's activism began in the 1960s with involvement in the student and anti-war movements. In the 1960s and 1970s, her commitment to the women's movement grew and was demonstrated through her poetry and writings. In 1964, Rich joined the New Left, which spurred a period of both political and personal growth. After Rich moved to New York, she became a civil rights and anti-war activist, as well as a radical feminist active in the women's rights movement.

Rich's works which included, Necessities of Life (1966), Leaflets (1969), and Will to Change (1971), reflect an evolving, expanding sense of poetic form and social engagement.^{[citation needed]} Rich became active in the women's liberation movement from this point forward. In 1974, her collection Diving Into the Wreck received the National Book Award for Poetry; Rich, however, refused the award individually, instead joining with two other female poets (Alice Walker and Audre Lorde) to accept it on behalf of all silenced women^{[citation needed]}.

Rich's poetry of the 1980s and 1990s cast a broader net, once again exploring the themes of the late 1960s and early 1970s, but with greater acuteness and range.^{[original research?]} The award-winning volume An Atlas of the Difficult World (1991) and Dark Fields of the Republic (1995) in particular map out discursive spaces engaging private and public histories. During the 1990’s Rich became an active member of numerous advisory boards such as the Boston Woman’s Fund, National Writers Union, Sisterhood in Support of Sisters in South Africa, and New Jewish Agenda.

[edit] Awards

Adrienne Rich has received numerous awards including two Guggenheim Fellowships, the inaugural Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize (1986), the Brandeis Creative Arts Medal, the Common Wealth Award, the William Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement, and the National Poetry Association Award for Distinguished Service to the Art of Poetry. She has also been awarded a MacArthur Fellowship (1994), an Academy of American Poets Fellowship, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Lannan Foundation (1999), the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize (1992), the National Institute of Arts and Letters Award, the Shelley Memorial Award (1970), the National Book Award for Poetry (1974) for Diving into the Wreck, the Wallace Stevens Award (1996), the Poets' Prize (1992) for Atlas of the Difficult World, and the Frost Medal (1992).

In 1997, Adrienne Rich refused the National Medal of Arts, 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."^[2] Another quote from the same speech outlines her view of poetry: "[Art] means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of the power which holds it hostage."

[edit] Present day

Adrienne Rich lives in Santa Cruz, California, with her partner, novelist, poet and academic Michelle Cliff. They have been together since 1976.^[3]

[edit] Works

[edit] Nonfiction

• Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution. Norton. 1976. ISBN 9780393312843. 
• On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose, 1966-1978, 1979
• Blood, Bread, and Poetry: Selected Prose, 1979-1985, 1986 (Includes the noted essay: Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence)
• What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics, 1993
• Arts of the Possible: Essays and Conversations. W.W. Norton. 2001. ISBN 9780393050455. 
• Poetry and Commitment: An Essay, 2007
• A Human Eye: Essays on Art in Society, 1997-2008, 2009

[edit] Poetry

• A Change of World. Yale University Press. 1951. 
• The Diamond Cutters, and Other Poems. Harper. 1955. 
• Snapshots of a daughter-in-law: poems, 1954-1962. Harper & Row. 1983. 
• Necessities of life: poems, 1962-1965. W.W. Norton. 1966. 
• Selected Poems. Chatto & Hogarth P Windus. 1967. 
• Leaflets. W.W. Norton. 1969. ISBN 9780039304195. 
• The Will to Change: Poems 1968-1970. Norton. 1971. 
• Diving into the Wreck. W.W. Norton. 1973. 
• Poems: Selected and New, 1950-1974. Norton. 1975. ISBN 9780393043921. 
• Twenty-one Love Poems. Effie's Press. 1976. 
• The Dream of a Common Language. Norton. 1978. ISBN 9780393045024. 
• A Wild Patience Has Taken Me this Far: Poems 1978-1981. 1982. ISBN 9780393310375.  (reprint 1993)
• Sources. Heyeck Press. 1983. 
• The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New, 1950-1984. W. W. Norton & Company, Incorporated. 1984. ISBN 9780393310757. 
• Your Native Land, Your Life: Poems. Norton. 1986. ISBN 9780393023183. 
• Time’s Power: Poems, 1985-1988. Norton. 1989. ISBN 9780393026771. 
• An Atlas of the Difficult World: Poems 1988-1991. Norton. 1991. ISBN 9780393030693. 
• Collected Early Poems, 1950-1970. W. W. Norton & Company, Incorporated. 1993. ISBN 9780393313857. 
• Dark Fields of the Republic: Poems, 1991-1995. W.W. Norton. 1995. ISBN 9780393038682. 
• Selected poems, 1950-1995. Salmon Pub.. 1996. ISBN 9781897648780. 
• Midnight Salvage: Poems, 1995-1998. Norton. 1999. ISBN 9780393046823. 
• Fox: Poems 1998-2000. W W Norton & Co Inc. 2001. ISBN 9780393323771.  (reprint 2003}
• The School Among the Ruins: Poems, 2000-2004. W. W. Norton & Co.. 2004. ISBN 9780393327557. 
• Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth: Poems 2004–2006. 9780393065657. 

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Adrienne Rich

• Academy of American Poets Page
• Groundbreaking Books: Diving Into the Wreck
• Biography and links to Poems
• Modern American Poets page
• Audio recordings at PennSound
• Legislators of the world essay from the The Guardian, November 18 2006
• Adrienne Rich Papers Schlesinger Library from the Radcliffe Institute
• Works by or about Adrienne Rich in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Complete text of Rich's letter of refusal for the National Medal for the Arts, 1997
• A Rich Life: Adrienne Rich on Poetry, Politics, and Personal Revelation - interview by Michael Klein in 1999
• Poet and Activist Rich, Still Dreaming Of a World Without Borders by Elaine Margolin, Forward, April 2 2009
• Review of A Human Eye by Dennis Morton, Good Times, June 18 2009
• Ethan Gilsdorf's review of "A Human Eye" in Internet Review of Books