Adrienne Rich Summary

Adrienne Rich (1929 -) American poet, essayist, and critic. Adrienne Rich: Introduction Adrienne Rich: Principal Works Adrienne Rich: Primary Sources Adrienne Rich: General Commentary Adrienne Rich: T... Read more

Biography EssayAdrienne Rich is one of the foremost poets and feminists of modern times. Her work spans more than forty years of her adult life, beginning in 1951 when she won the Yale Series of Young... Read more

Adrienne Rich has made significant contributions as a critic, a scholar, and a teacher; but she speaks most importantly as a poet. Her work sustains her belief that "Poetry is above all a concentrati... Read more

Critical Essay by Anne Bernays [Of Woman Born] is a disturbing book. In a footnote on page 76 the author, a poet and critic, writes: "I never read a child-rearing manual … that raised th... Read more

Critical Essay by Myra Stark A woman in a patriarchal society such as ours, Rich has said, "in which males hold dominant power and determine what part females shall or shall not play," i... Read more

Critical Essay by Laura E. Casari Poet Adrienne Rich, in Of Woman Born, chose the topic of motherhood "because it was a crucial, still relatively unexplored, area for feminist theory."&#... Read more

Critical Essay by Helen Vendler [Mixed] motives—to enlarge "feminist theory" and to express a personal experience of a fateful kind—account for the title of Adrienne Rich&#... Read more

Critical Essay by Ellen Moers Adrienne Rich's prose moves with force, clarity, energy; and soothes with a poet's grace and elegance. The only bad prose in ["On Lies, Secrets, and ... Read more

Critical Essay by Barbara Grizzuti Harrison It's an unhappy fact of life and of prose that ideology tends to coarsen, and sometimes to fossilize, the moral imagination; it leaves little room fo... Read more

Critical Essay by Barbara L. Estrin The power to choose—the exhilaration and the humiliation of self-determination—is … the subject of Adrienne Rich's The Dream of a Common... Read more

Below, Greenwald explains the effect of Rich's feminist consciousness in her poetry of the Vietnam era, highlighting her empathy with "the Enemy" and her appeal for a subjective v... Read more

In the essay below, Hammer meditates on various aspects of the relation between "culture" and "AIDS"—between aesthetics and sexuality—by comparing Rich'... Read more

In the following glowing review of Dark Fields of the Republic, St. John admires Rich's poetic style for its blending of personal details with broad public concerns. During the past 40 years as... Read more

In the following essay, Henneberg identifies the feminine and masculine positions in the early poem "Autumn Equinox" in terms of the primary concerns of Rich's later poetry: �... Read more

Adrienne Rich's poetry serves a prophetic function by articulating the history and ideals of the feminist struggle. By recalling the ancient chthonic mysteries of blood and birth, by reconnecting daug... Read more