SOURCE: "Rich's 'Autumn Equinox,'" in The Explicator, Vol. 55, No. 3, Spring, 1997, pp. 169-72.

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: "the dream and the limitations of a common language."

Adrienne Rich's semiautobiographical narrative poem "Autumn Equinox" (1955) anticipates two central concerns of her "coming-out" volume of poetry. The Dream of a Common Language (1978), and her subsequent poetry: the dream and the limitations of a common language.

"Autumn Equinox" presents a middle-aged female speaker reflecting on her marriage. In the poem she is portrayed raking autumn leaves in the yard, while her husband, a professor, remains in the house reading Dryden. The atmosphere is one of resignation and silence; and a sense of the speaker's patient anticipation of death, paralleled by autumn's calm move toward winter, pervades the lines. Lyman...