Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Adrienne Rich

Critical Essay by Adrienne Rich

SOURCE: "Beyond the Heirlooms of Tradition," in Poetry, Vol. CV, No. 2, November, 1964, pp. 128-29.

One of the foremost contemporary American poets, Rich also writes criticism from a feminist perspective. In the following review of Found Objects, she evaluates Zukofsky's verse in terms of the poetic traditions that shaped it.

Zukofsky calls this collection Found Objects because, as he states in his fore-note, "nature as creator had more of a hand in it than one was aware. The work then owns something of the look of found objects in late exhibits—which arrange themselves as it were, one object near another—roots that have become sculpture, wood that appears talisman, and so on: charms, amulets, maybe, but never really such things since the struggles so to speak that made them do not seem to have been human trials and evils—they appear entirely natural." One could perhaps make out a case for...
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