Rich, Adrienne

On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978

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On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978
Adrienne Cecile Rich
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Of Woman Born: Motherhood As Experience and Institution

ASIN: 0393312852

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Poetry and Commitment
Adrienne Rich
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0393331032

Book Description

In the traditional of great literary manifestos, Norton is proud to present this powerful work by Adrienne Rich. With passion, critical questioning, and humor, Adrienne Rich suggests how poetry has actually been lived in the world, past and present. In this essay, which was the basis for her speech upon accepting the National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, she ranges among themes including poetry's disparagement as "either immoral or unprofitable," the politics of translation, how poetry enters into extreme situations, different poetries as conversations across place and time. In its openness to many voices, Poetry and Commitment offers a perspective on poetry in an ever more divided and violent world. "I hope never to idealize poetry—it has suffered enough from that. Poetry is not a healing lotion, an emotional massage, a kind of linguistic aromatherapy. Neither is it a blueprint, nor an instruction manual, nor a billboard."

Adrienne Rich's Poetry and Prose (Norton Critical Editions)

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Diving into the crap
Booooooo-ring!
recognized by some be in top 100--(US) poets
Thank You Thank You Adrienne!!!

Adrienne Rich's Poetry and Prose (Norton Critical Editions)
Adrienne Rich , and Barbara Charlesworth Gelpi
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo

ASIN: 0393961478

Customer Reviews:

Diving into the crap.......2007-01-18

These poems might as well have been the dictated sounds of gas bubbles coming up through the innards of a body dragged out of a lake. Rich is bitter, stale like old medical encyclopedias uprooted from their post in grandma's attic. If that's what you're into, have at it. Me, I'm not into mothball verse.

Booooooo-ring!.......2001-01-22

Adrienne Rich has to be the most over-rated poet in history. Her work would be completely forgotten if it was judged as poetry, but because she has been adopted as the ideological idol of PC fanatics everywhere, she has become an untouchable icon of the present. Rich is best compared, intellectually, to the literary drudges of Soviet Russia, who extolled the glories of the people for the Communist Party. The diffrence, obviously, is that Rich is not embraced by the State, but by the buddy system that is academic feminism. This volume, complete with the breathless worship -- oh, sorry, critical scholarly attention -- of the editor, is a very fine presentation of what is, for all practical purposes, the work of a transient figure whose prominence is entirely dependent on the current PC state of the American academic establishment. If you wandered to this book because it claims to be poetry, why not skip it and try someone with some soul adn some real poetic talent?

recognized by some be in top 100--(US) poets.......1999-10-06

Oct. 5: She is presented with prestigious Lannan Literary Award..for $100,000 for a job in writing,well.

Thank You Thank You Adrienne!!!.......1999-07-01

Not merely a wonderful and incredibly courageous poet; oh, no. She is also a brilliant and challenging essayist. Most famous for "The Hermit's Scream", her other prose is absolutely startling in its originality and courage. This book is a threat to white males everywhere. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Of Woman Born: Motherhood As Experience and Institution

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Time for a Shift from Victim to Victor Consciousness
Life Changing Book
An important book
Right subject, wrong author
A Sad Book And Sad Comment on Modernity

Of Woman Born: Motherhood As Experience and Institution
Adrienne Cecile Rich
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Representations of Motherhood
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On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978

ASIN: 0393312844

Customer Reviews:

Time for a Shift from Victim to Victor Consciousness.......2005-05-12

I am troubled by the deep levels of victim consciousness in this book. How sad that Adrienne Rich, given the gift of three children, could remember little of the experience "except anxiety, physical weariness, anger, self blame, boredom and divisions within myself." I feel pity not only for Rich but for the millions of women who suffer similar experiences and see no options other than checking out with depression or acting out through rage, both of which are counterproductive and generally treated with pharmaceutical drugs. Clearly it's time for more empowering alternatives, starting with nutrition. As a Clinical Nutritionist, I have seen many depressed and/or angry women dramatically improve their physical and mental health by giving up junk foods and so-called "health foods"in favor of traditional foods rich in protein and fat. In other words, we must assert our right to eat the life-giving whole food gifts from Mother Nature, not the fractionated, packaged and dead food-like products built by Father Technology. Although nutrition is but the first step, it will take well-fed women to tap into victor consciousness and to find creative ways to overcome the crippling obstacles, long-standing abuses and self-destructive patterns that continue to incapacitate so many gifted women.

Life Changing Book.......2005-01-16

When I first read OF WOMAN BORN, in the mid-seventies, it was a Godsend. Rich's feminist critique of the institution of motherhood elucidates the source of so many of the world's problems. When women, the source of life, the life givers, the ones who bear each one of us into the world, whether man or woman, are denigrated, oppressed, abused, imprisoned, and exploited by governments, religions, and cultures - everything is off-kilter. Rich accurately describes the state of motherhood in the mid-20th century and the toll it took on mothers and children. She helped me understand that the pressures mothers put on their daughters to conform to sexist stereotypes were part of the oppression they themselves were enduring. Re-reading this book over the decades, I've seen that while some things have improved for women since Rich wrote OF WOMAN BORN, we still have a long way to go before women are treated equally or given the respect they deserve for their role as life givers and nurturers. The worldwide upsurge in the revival of Fundamentalist religions that institutionalize the oppression and second-class status of mothers and their daughters is frightening, as is the rage expressed by some reviewers of this book. People who are threatened by the ideas in OF WOMAN BORN want to return to the days when women were chattel and children were seen but not heard. In the 21st century, don't we owe our children, grandchildren and the world more than the tired, worn-out worldviews that brought women and families so much pain?

An important book.......2004-01-19

Those who have criticized this book thus far here are women who derive their sole identity and sense of importance, sadly, from their role as mothers. I know women who thoroughly enjoy being mothers, but they are few and their circumstances are unique. And even some of them still have a clear need to have another identity and a life of the mind they aren't permitted within the "institution" of motherhood. I myself, and most other mothers I know, struggle with the impossible expectations placed upon us to be perfect mothers/providers/etc., struggle to create a new and healthy understanding of motherhood, struggle to do right by our children and yet hold on to our own personhood, thinking, humor,... finding ourselves too often battling with self-hatred, resentment and guilt, knowing inside that no matter what, someone will criticize us for doing it all wrong. This book exposes this unfair situation in which many women who are mothers find themselves in. If to some Rich comes off as "angry," well of course she is. It's a righteous anger. My only criticism of this book is the lack of attention it gives to the experiences of women of color and working-class women.

Right subject, wrong author.......2002-10-24

Adrienne Rich's experience as a mother is what propelled her to write this depressing look at motherhood as an institution and at the the patriarchial society that imposes its restrictions and encourages its oppression. It is her own negative experience as a mother that compells her to condemn the entire history of womanhood and its accomplishments. Did Adrienne Rich ever think that perhaps she is projecting her own experiences onto the lives of the general public? A selfish, unloving mother who felt "depressed" throughout her entire experience raising children is certainly not the one to be writing about the experience of motherhood as the general public sees it. Rather than giving practical advice in terms of empowering women, she emasculates men, choosing this as the best method to raise women. Her suggestions as to how women can overcome their "oppression" are buried somewhere underneath poetic phrases relating to her own miserable experiences as a mother. If her kids, aren't in therapy, they should be!

A Sad Book And Sad Comment on Modernity.......2001-03-18

I was forced to read this book in a class recently by the usual suspect, my feminist professor, and was very sad to see that this piece of lesbian hatred of the family was being pushed upon young women in my class at a vulnerable time of their lives. The usual atmosphere in universities now, in which young women are asked either to agree with feminist diatribes of this sort or be labelled weak and a tool of men, was so plainly at work here. I'm older than the others in my class, and a father and husband, and the book was so plainly the product of a neurotic, unhappy person that I was having difficulty understanding why we were reading it. The vast majority of women want families and to be mothers and wives, and they need help to do it better, not to be force-fed this sort of weak broth. When Rich says of her pregnancy and motherhood, "I only knew that I had lived through something which was considered central to the lives of women... a key to the meaning of life; and that I could remember little except anxiety, physical weariness, anger, self-blame, boredom, and divisions within myself," she admits to something sad, not hoepful, and demeans her children and their worth. Poor, sad, neurotic woman. I think young women would be best served to view this book as something to avoid -- or at least as something to view with pity, and not permit your professors force you to agree with it.

An Atlas of the Difficult World: Poems 1988-1991

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"There are roads to take."
The signal work of an important American poet
Very touching...

An Atlas of the Difficult World: Poems 1988-1991
Adrienne Cecile Rich
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

The Dream of a Common Language: Poems, 1974-1977
What is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics, Expanded Edition
The School Among the Ruins: Poems 2000-2004
On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978
Diving into the Wreck: Poems 1971-1972

ASIN: 0393308316

Amazon.com

The heart of Adrienne Rich's award-winning collection beats in its title sequence, 13 poems charting "An Atlas of the Difficult World." Like Atlas, who bears Earth on his shoulders, Rich bears--and wields--an enormous political consciousness. These poems find her struggling to say what is honest and true, resisting easy answers, having the ambition to risk everything; these are the energies for which her readers return. For example, after deriding as solipsistic the poetry of Richard Hugo, she writes: <blockquote> I wonder if this is a white man's madness.
I honor your truth and refuse to leave it at that.
What have I learned from stories of the hunt, of lonely men in gangs?
But there were other stories...
</blockquote> Rich knows that mere political poetry has a quick expiration date. Her genius enables her to speak to the moment and to posterity simultaneously. "Catch if you can your country's moment, begin / where any calendar's ripped-off: Appomattox / Wounded Knee, Los Alamos / Selma, the last airlift from Saigon," she exhorts at one point, tuning the present to its history like Muriel Rukeyser or Ezra Pound. Early in the book Rich praises "those needed to teach, advise, persuade, weigh arguments ... the meticulous delicate work of reaching the heart of the desperate woman, the desperate man / --never-to-be-finished, still unbegun work of repair," but wonders who will continue this work in the America she has witnessed. "It cannot be done without them / and where are they now?" With this, her 21st book, her echo returns the answer. --Edward Skoog

Customer Reviews:

"There are roads to take.".......2001-03-23

I have revisited this book many times since it was published ten years ago. In her 13-poem collection, Rich turns her penetrating poet's gaze to "the difficult world"--malathion strawberries (p. 3), missiles in the desert (p. 5), silence (p. 10), car graveyards (p. 11), waste (p. 11), Wounded Knee, Los Alamos, Selma (p. 12), death on the Appalachian Trail (p. 14), and loneliness (p. 19). These are not "feel-good" poems, and the title poem is stronger than others.

"These are not the roads you know me by," she writes in her Whitman-like title poem, "but the woman driving, walking, watching from life and death is the same" (p. 5). As these poems reveal, Rich writes with stunning honesty from her heart, soul, and the marrow of her bones (p. 51).

G. Merritt

The signal work of an important American poet.......2001-02-10

I'm surprised no substantial reviews of *Atlas* have been posted, as anyone who has read it knows that Rich's survey of American life during the Gulf War era (in the title poem) is an unforgettable document of our time. Rich is known as a feminist writer and radical critic, and that impression scares off undergraduates for whom feminism is too loaded a term. This book, especially the title poem, "Eastern War Time," and "Tattered Kaddish," shows that Rich's feminist insight does not limit her attention--or relevance--to women subjects and readers.

Many lines from "An Atlas of the Difficult World" stay with me, but from its final section, I'll give this as an example of how Rich strives to find in her readers equal partners, sharing her task of representing all of American life:

I know you are reading this poem which is not in your language guessing at some words while others keep you reading and I want to know which words they are... I know you are reading this poem because there is nothing else left to read there where you have landed, stripped as you are.

Rich sees her readers as stripped of innocence, of the ability to make casual assumptions about their lives in America and the world. But these poems offer the gift of understanding our current state, and of a beautiful, surprisingly generous description of us all.

Very touching..........2000-06-26

It is a touching example of poetry expressing life's struggles. Anyone can relate to Rich's amazing words and thoughts. Please give this book a try!

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Needed: one Update
essays by a poet breaking down arbitrary walls and mistaken assumptions

Line Break: Poetry As Social Practice
James Scully
Manufacturer: Curbstone Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Book Description

Line Break is the major work on poetry as social practice and a must-read for anyone interested in contemporary criticism or poetry. For many years, James Scully, along with others, quietly radicalized American poetry -in theory and in practice, in how it is lived as well as in how it is written. In eight provocative essays, James Scully argues provocatively for artistic and cultural practice that actively opposes structures of power too often reinforced by intellectual activities.

"James Scully's essays, like his poems, refuse to soothe or simplify, to shortchange either poetry or the imperative for social revolution. His fiercely demystifying intelligence is grounded in hope and realism for poetry in itself along with other forms of dissident engagement."-Adrienne Rich

"Scully's brilliance is mesmerizing, radicalizing, a power plant producing synapses in the 'mind politic' that may well allow Americans, finally, to write and discourse with our kind around the globe. If American poets have a role to play in preserving free speech in the 21st century, this book belongs in our every backpack."-Linda McCarriston

Customer Reviews:

Needed: one Update.......2006-07-04

If they're going to be reprinting this book, why not ask the author to update it a little. In "Taking Poetry Seriously," Scully addresses this issue only to dismiss it with the other hand, even as he admits that "Geopolitically and technologically, much has changed since these essays were written some 15-20 years ago. Upheavals on virtually every level have only made the aesthetic question less discrete, more implicated in just about everything, than it ever was supposed to be." And yet he does nothing about it, just releases the same eight essays which, if you're reading them through, all share the same dated air, some of them so dated as to be worthless for readers of the 21st century.

Well, you're never going to convince me that Roque Dalton was the great poet of modernism anyhow. But as you can see in the sentences quoted above, Scully's prose is often an imprecise arena where accidents occur. Could anything be more vague than his use of "just about everything" above? Or, when was there a time when the "aesthetic question" was ever less than fully implicated, even if in a "noblesse oblige" way, in questions of social justice?

Scully's influence is vast and it is owing to him, I think, that we have seen a gradual lessening of the "privilege of individual experience" around which so much of our lyric poetry was written. And yet it's all the sadder that he couldn't bestir himself to update his remarks, incidental and otherwise, on Cuba, Iraq, the geosphere, postcolonial implications of post-impressionism in art and writing, and the technological wonderland of the internet. Needed: one update.

essays by a poet breaking down arbitrary walls and mistaken assumptions.......2005-08-03

Scully says that in the eight essays he means to question the "fetishes we find ourselves wearing like ankle bracelets...that enable cultural overseers to shut us up in a kind of house arrest." Adrienne Rich remarks in her "Foreword" on this poet's "fiercely demystifying intelligence." Yes, Scully fiercely, uncompromisingly, brings his hopes for a truly, thoroughly humane world into the light. Such hopes are often preceded by trenchant, riveting critiques on writings, ideas, and states of affairs; and sometimes the hopes are bound in with these in a struggle. Such struggling especially is the sign that besides having a cogent moral sense and articulated vision, Scully is a consummate realist. He does not abandon common, inevitable life for promises, visions, or programs of a heavenly life. What he surely does bring to light is the true notion that "ankle bracelets" need not be an inevitable or permanent part of life, nor be the defining attribute of it. The essays mostly and ostensibly about poetry, writing style, expression and all its sources and destinations are in a larger sense and ultimately about larger life than most are accustomed to, and than most can even conceive of. The essays packed with serious and reflective thought, earnest with teaching and persuasion, and buoyant with inspiration and possibility demonstrate once again that the best writing on politics, culture, and individual life and its choices usually comes from accomplished poets such as Scully. Essays of Seamus Heaney are another example.

What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics

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Better Late Than Never To Read A Great Book!
Style and Substance
Fabulous book on writing, the world and politics!

What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics
Adrienne Cecile Rich
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0393035654

Book Description

America's enduring poet of conscience reflects on the proven and potential role of poetry in contemporary politics and life.

Through journals, letters, dreams, and close readings of the work of many poets, Adrienne Rich reflects on how poetry and politics enter and impinge on American life. This expanded edition includes a new preface by the author as well as her post-9/11 "Six Meditations in Place of a Lecture."

Customer Reviews:

Better Late Than Never To Read A Great Book!.......2003-03-07

Adrienne Rich is my current literary hero. And, no, her What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics isn't about feminism. It is about remaining human and maintaining artistic integrity in the face of the dehumanizing influences of our world. Rich calls into question W. H. Auden's oft quoted line "poetry does nothing," introduces readers to marginalized poets we ignore to our own loss, and demonstrates how poetry does considerably more than one might imagine. If I could afford it, copies of her book would go to everyone on my holiday gift list.

Style and Substance.......2000-06-22

Rich's collection of essays on poetry, WHAT IS FOUND THERE, is a superb tapestry of provocative, incisive, and relevant ruminations on poetry. What I really liked about this book is Rich's ability to connect poetry to one's everyday life, not describing it as something to be read by an elite, educated few.() Still, this book moved me and, as a student of poetry, I am inspired and hopeful that poetry and the discussion of it still thrives, contrary to many predictions.

Fabulous book on writing, the world and politics!.......2000-04-02

One of the best books on the place of poetry in the world. A beautifully written collection of prose that discusses the integral connection between poetry and politics. Rich shows the power and passion of the written word and the changes it is able to bring about. Passionately written and surprisingly easy to read.

The Works of Anne Bradstreet (The John Harvard Library)

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Bradstreet's Complete Works are Worth Reading
My family
America's first great poet
Anne Bradstreet's voice reaches across the centuries.
Anne Bradstreet helps us remember our country's roots

The Works of Anne Bradstreet (The John Harvard Library)
Anne Bradstreet
Manufacturer: Belknap Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Criticism | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Mistress Bradstreet: The Untold Life of America's First Poet
Poems of Edward Taylor
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Plymouth Plantation 1620 - 1647

ASIN: 067495999X

Book Description

Anne Bradstreet, the first true poet in the American colonies, wrote at a time and in a place where any literary creation was rare and difficult and that of a woman more unusual still. Born in England and brought up in the household of the Earl of Lincoln where her father, Thomas Dudley, was steward, Anne Bradstreet sailed to Massachusetts Bay in 1630, shortly after her marriage at sixteen to Simon Bradstreet. For the next forty years she lived in the New England wilderness, raising a family of eight, combating sickness and hardship, and writing the verse that made her, as the poet Adrienne Rich says in her Foreword to this edition, "the first non-didactic American poet, the first to give an embodiment to American nature, the first in whom personal intention appears to precede Puritan dogma as an impulse to verse."

All Anne Bradstreet's extant poetry and prose is published here with modernized spelling and punctuation. This volume reproduces the second edition of Several Poems, brought out in Boston in 1678, as well as the contents of a manuscript first printed in 1857. Adrienne Rich's Foreword offers a sensitive and illuminating critique of Anne Bradstreet both as a person and as a writer, and the Introduction, scholarly notes, and appendices by Jeannine Hensley make this an authoritative edition.

Adrienne Rich observes, "Intellectual intensity among women gave cause for uneasiness" at this period--a fact borne out by the lines in the Prologue to the early poems: "I am obnoxious to each carping tongue/ Who says my hand a needle better fits." The broad scope of Anne Bradstreet's own learning and reading is most evident in the literary and historical allusions of The Tenth Muse, the first edition of her poems, published in London in 1650. Her later verse and her prose meditations strike a more personal note, however, and reveal both a passionate religious sense and a depth of feeling for her husband, her children, the fears and disappointments she constantly faced, and the consoling power of nature. Imbued with a Puritan striving to turn all events to the glory of God, these writings bear the mark of a woman of strong spirit, charm, delicacy, and wit: in their intimate and meditative quality Anne Bradstreet is established as a poet of sensibility and permanent stature.

Customer Reviews:

Bradstreet's Complete Works are Worth Reading.......2005-12-12

Anne Bradstreet, perhaps America's earliest poet, lived in an uncertain time in the new world. She grew up a Puritan and lived in a Puritan society in the New World. However, I believe Bradstreet should be considered as more than just a Puritan poet. I just finished a paper for my Masters class debating whether or not Bradstreet is a Puritan poet, and I concluded that she is in fact much more. Every quote I used in my project came from Hensley's book, since it is one of the few that actually contains everything published by Bradstreet.

Bradstreet's poetry and prose are accessible to anyone. That is, her poetry is easy to read and understand. I encourage people interested in Bradstreet's life and the life of people during the early times of American history to read her collection of work. Then, I encourage the reader to judge for themselves how much we should consider Bradstreet to be considered only as a Puritan author. In the poems where she address her husband and children, she is circumventing the traditional Puritan belief that love and marriage end after death. Bradstreet also had to fight the male critics and authorities during her time, and her poetry reflects this conflict. For example, she degrades her own work in comparison to male poets, but by doing so, Bradstreet is masking her true intentions by flattering the very people she is insulting. This further proves her skills as a female poet writing in a Puritan time period.

My goal is to read all of Bradstreet's poetry and prose from beginning to end. I think Bradstreet is under represented in schools, but I hope books like this bring her back to the forefront of early American Literature. I encourage people to buy this book, read her words, and try to imagine writing in such a dangerous time period. Bradstreet captures the fear and danger of living on the New Frontier, and the conflict each person would have faced between their faith in God and the reality they experienced. I hope others will enjoy Bradstreet's poetry as much as I did.

My family.......2003-10-02

I started reading Anne Bradstreet because I'm directly descended from her, but I kept reading because of her intelligent and unique voice.

America's first great poet.......2000-05-27

How many people know that America's first great poet was a woman? Reading this collection of her works leaves one in little doubt about her greatness. The consummate artistry with which she expresses her inmost feelings pulls her to us, across the divide of three and a half centuries. Bradstreet's poetry shows that those Puritans, with their funny clothes, intolerant religion, and witch hunts experienced love, longing, and loss with much the same emotions that we do. Very highly recommended.

Anne Bradstreet's voice reaches across the centuries........1999-07-03

Three hundred and fifty years later, Anne Bradstreet still touches the heart and soul of her readers. On the Burning of My House still reminds us of where our priorities need to be, and on the importance of family. As a 10th great granddaughter, I realize that her works were written not only for herself and for her peers, but for the thousands of descendants in the world today. That is what makes truly great literature.

Anne Bradstreet helps us remember our country's roots.......1999-05-11

As an English major, I studied Anne Bradstreet in college and enjoyed her. I was thrilled to find out several years later she is my 9th great-grandmother! I love the spirituality and honesty of her writings. My favorite is "As Weary Pilgrim," as it captures the fatigue we sometimes feel in battling the adversities of life, and the hope of rest in a glorious afterlife. I love the cadence of the poem; it gives me a restful feeling. Reading colonial writings such as these, I'm remined of the foundation upon which our nation was built and the admirable character of some of these early Americans. It has become popular to "trash" the early Puritans. I am grateful for Anne Bradstreet's legacy of faith and courage, and the legacy of others who lived in her day.

Blood, Bread, and Poetry: Selected Prose 1979 -1985 (Norton Paperback)

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Read this book
Rich vs. Reaganism
Rich prose

Blood, Bread, and Poetry: Selected Prose 1979 -1985 (Norton Paperback)
Adrienne Cecile Rich
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Essays | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Classics | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0393311627

Customer Reviews:

Read this book.......2002-01-14

This book, and all of Rich's books, are the kind you want to give to everyone you know. Thoroughly enriching. They should be read by all poets, thinkers, women,....and , yes, men too.

Rich vs. Reaganism.......2001-10-20

"Blood, Bread, and Poetry: Selected Prose 1979-1985" brings together a thought-provoking collection of essays and speeches by Adrienne Rich. A prolific poet, Jewish woman, feminist, lesbian, political activist, and mother of three sons, Rich attempts to bring all of the pieces of herself into play as she confronts a host of intellectual, artistic, and ethical issues.

As the book's subtitle indicates, all of these pieces were written between 1979 and 1985, and thus the book as a whole serves as a valuable document of the intellectual work of a radical thinker under the neo-conservative shadow of the Reagan era. The book also evokes the waning decade of the Cold War.

Rich writes with great passion about feminism, and with great anger about the violence and oppression directed at lesbians from centuries past to the time in which these pieces were written. She often quotes or pays tribute to other writers who have inspired and impacted her: James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, and others.

Rich covers much intriguing ground in these prose pieces. "The Problem of Lorraine Hansberry" may inspire you to re-read Hansberry's classic play "A Raisin in the Sun." "Split at the Root: An Essay on Jewish Identity" is a compelling autobiographical piece that examines her mixed Jewish/gentile heritage, her marriage and life as a mother, and her eventual emergence as a lesbian. A number of essays deal with her interest in the Sandinista revolution of Nicaragua.

Despite the often grim and humorless subject matter, I find Rich to be a remarkably engaging writer. At best, her work is challenging and genuinely thoughtful. As companion texts to this worthwhile collection I recommend the following: Audre Lorde's essay collection "Sister Outsider" and Tony Kushner's two-part play "Angels in America." For complementary perspectives on revolutionary Nicaragua, try the poetry of Gioconda Belli and Daisy Zamora. Finally, check out the two inaugural addresses of Reagan as well as former New York Governor Mario Cuomo's keynote address to the 1984 Democratic Convention; these political speeches can be found in the more recent editions of "A Documentary History of the United States," edited by Richard Heffner.

Rich prose.......2001-06-26

Adrienne Rich's prose collection Blood, Bread and Poetry spans almost sixteen years of writing. Those who are familiar with Rich's poems will find themselves in familiar intellectual and emotional territories. While I enjoy Rich's poetry much more than her prose (who doesn't enjoy poetry more than prose), Blood,... still had a freshness of voice and language that was surprising for a book that tackles philosophical and political material. For those who are interested in really delving into Rich's poetry (and her writings in general) the book is definitely worth reading at least once. I also feel the book is a must for anyone who is serious about writing. Overall, it was a satisfying read that I've come back to on occasion

Compulsory heterosexuality and lesbian existence

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Compulsory heterosexuality and lesbian existence
Adrienne Cecile Rich
Manufacturer: Antelope Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B00072FKC4

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