The Poetry of Adrienne Rich

The Poetry of Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich was born in Baltimore, Maryland in the year of 1929. Rich grew up in a household as she describes it as " ...white, middle-class, full of books, and with a father who encouraged her to write" (Daniel). Her father Arnold Rich was a doctor and a pathology professor and her mother, Helen Jones Rich , was a pianist and a composer. "Adrienne Rich recalls her growing-up years clearly dominated by the intellectual presence and demands of the male in the family, her father, while correctly marked by the submerged tensions arising from the conflicts between the religious and cultural heritage of the father's Jewish background and her mother's Southern Protestantism" (Pope). In the year of 1951, Rich graduated from Radcliffe University. During this year, Adrienne Rich also won the Yale Younger Poets Prize for her first book, A Change of World. In 1953, Adrienne Rich married Alfred Conrad who was a Harvard economist; during the next five years Rich had three sons. Deborah Pope says that Rich's journal entries, from these years, state that this was an "emotionally and artistically difficult period" (Pope). Rich's poems were mainly influenced by Robert Frost, Yeates, Stevens, and Auden. She became a major influence, through her essays and poetry, in many areas of modern-day women's movements, she had become one of the most provoking voices on the politics of sexuality, race, power, and women's culture.

Adrienne Rich is a southern Jew who grew up during the forties. Rich lived in a gentle neighborhood and was never taught about her Jewish heritage. She eventually had to deal with conflicts between the religious and cultural heritage of her father's Jewish background and her mother's southern Protestantism (Pope). Rich's father didn't show any signs of ethnicity in any way. He did this to fit into a society that was against Jewish people. In many of her works, Adrienne Rich talks about being oppressed. In her poem, "1948: Jews," Adrienne Rich refers to her college years. At Radcliffe University, she was to stay away from Jews. No matter how much she wanted, she could not unite with them as a group because socially it was less acceptable. She had to avoid her own ethnicity to survive in the American culture. "A Vision," is another poem Rich wrote that discusses the issue of racism. In this poem, Rich talks about a Jewish women who died during WWII. The reason why Rich talks about this woman is because she can relate to this woman. Adrienne Rich can relate to her because they both are Jewish women that grew up in the forties. They were both victims of racism or felt racism in society, The poem refers to being forced to lose your identity, character, and ethnicity. Throughout her life Adrienne Rich has felt a loss of identity. Rich's father practically abandons his heritage to fit into a racist society (Pope). This hatred from society and the loss of identity has influenced Rich to write such great works. She has become a fervent activist against racism.

In 1951, when Rich first began writing poetry, she portrayed her writing after the prevailing male influential writers of the period. Later during the 1970s she began to change her way of writing and focused on feminism and lesbianism (American). At Radcliffe University, she studied solely male poets and she was taught entirely by male professors. These male poets and professors credited the origins of her style and their influence really showed in her early poetry. In 1953, Adrienne Rich married Alfred Conrad, a Harvard economist; in the next five years she gave birth to three sons. This was an emotionally and artistically difficult period for Adrienne Rich. Meagan Daniels explains that Rich felt it impossible for her to write without space (Daniel). She was struggling with conflicts over the given roles of womanhood versus those of artistry.

"I was writing very little, partly from fatigue, that female fatigue of suppressed anger and loss of contact with my own being; partly from the discontinuity of female life with its attention to small chores, errands, work that others constantly undo, small children's constant needs" (When We Dead Awaken).

In this poem, she describes her long struggle to confront her condition as a woman. A stanza from the poem "Of Woman Born" also explains how Rich felt during time when she had just become a mother and was struggling between the role of a woman and that of a poet.

"I knew I had to remake my life; I did not then understand that we the women of that academic community--as in so many middle-class communities of the period--were expected to fill both the part of the Victorian Lady of Leisure, the Angel in the House, and also of the Victorian cook, scullery maid, laundress, governess, and nurse" (Of Woman Born 1976).

Her next poem "Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law" was the first change and transformation in her poetic style. After writing "Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law" she began to date her poetry like entries in a journal. Rich's life was beginning to change now and in 1970 she ended her marriage; that same year, her husband committed suicide. In 1976 Adrienne Rich wrote an essay titled It is the Lesbian in Us and in 1977 she published Twenty-One Love Poems, and in 1980, Rich wrote an essay titled Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence, all of these works revealed her lesbianism. In twenty-One Love Poems the poems recorded and explored a lesbian relationship. The essay It is the Lesbian in Us explains the term "lesbian" from Adrienne Rich's point of view: "nothing so simple and dismissible as the fact that two women might go to bed together," as she wrote in the essay. Lesbianism for Adrienne Rich was a "sense of desiring oneself, choosing oneself; it was also a primary intensity between women..." (LITWEB).

Even before I wholly knew I was a lesbian, it was the lesbian in me who pursed that elusive configuration. And I believe it is the lesbian in every woman who is compelled by female energy, who gravitates toward strong women, who seeks a literature that will express that energy and strength. It is the lesbian in us who drives us to feel imaginatively, render in language, grasp, the full connection between woman and woman (Adrienne Rich).

Concentrating on lesbians in general, Adrienne Rich's poetry has evolved into a passionate political force. Throughout her career, Adrienne Rich has done nothing less than seize and caress the word "lesbian." She has worked hard for this whole new style of poetry. This poetry that has opened up a whole new way of life.