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 concentration of the power of language which is the power of our ultimate relationship to everything in the universe." Her poetry is remarkably integrated with other dimensions of her life, and changes in form and tone from volume to volume reflect changes in her personal life and consciousness. Rich grew up in Baltimore, Maryland. Her father, a physician, encouraged her to read and to write, and she was sensitive to his criticism and praise. Two pieces of juvenilia (a three-act play and poems published when she was ten; a one-act play published when she was twelve) are indications of the early support for Rich's interest in writing. She graduated with honors from Radcliffe College in...