Introduction & Overview of Rusted Legacy by Adrienne Rich

Rusted Legacy Introduction

Adrienne Rich published "Rusted Legacy" in the literary journal Sulfur in 1997. The poem appeared two years later in her poetry collection Midnight Salvage, in which the poet declared she tried, at the end of the century, "to face the terrible with hope, in language as complex as necessary. . . . to write . . . for readers . . . finding their own salvaged beauty as I have found mine." The poems meditate on political ideas and events from the twentieth century and attempt to "salvage" hope from the fear, violence, and despair that have characterized that period of history. Like the other poems in the volume, and as with much of Rich's work since the 1960s, "Rusted Legacy" fuses the political and the personal. In the poem, the speaker looks back on political events and attitudes of another time and place and laments the decay of once...
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