Adrienne Rich Criticism
Adrienne Rich (1929–2012) stands as a transformative figure in American literature, known for her profound impact on contemporary poetry and feminist discourse. Throughout her career, Rich's work evolved from modernist influences in earlier collections such as A Change of World and The Diamond Cutters, to the free verse and feminist themes that define her later pieces like Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law. Rich's poetry consistently interrogates the cultural functions and ideological underpinnings of the genre, a point noted by Alice Templeton. Her acclaimed collection, Diving into the Wreck, not only won the National Book Award but also serves as a radical feminist critique that challenges cultural norms and emphasizes women's self-determination.
Rich’s later works continue to expand on these feminist ideals, addressing broader issues like poverty and racial inequality in collections such as Your Native Land, Your Life and Dark Fields of the Republic. Her prose contributions, including Of Woman Born and On Lies, Secrets, and Silence, delve into feminist aesthetics and female self-determination, although they receive varied critical reception. David St. John and Denis Donoghue offer differing views on the cultural force of her work, yet her insightful portrayal of women's issues remains indisputable.
Rich's poetry, as David Kalstone notes, involves a deep exploration of feminism and the tension between personal and political narratives, employing imagery to explore complex identities. Her challenge to patriarchal structures is evident in works like The Dream of a Common Language, with Margaret Atwood and Stephen Yenser discussing its balance of insight and judgment. Rich’s essays, while highlighting institutional injustices against women, face critiques from figures like Anne Bernays for overlooking nuances in motherhood.
Her work also interrogates traditional linguistic norms, with Susan R. Van Dyne discussing her evolving identity and the tension between artistic control and emotional complexity. Collections like On Lies, Secrets, and Silence explore lesbianism and feminist critiques, though sometimes viewed as ideologically rigid by critics such as Ellen Moers and Barbara Grizzuti Harrison. As Carol Muske and Barbara L. Estrin highlight, Rich’s challenge to linguistic norms in The Dream of a Common Language underscores themes of self-determination and identity. Despite various critiques, Adrienne Rich remains a pivotal figure in feminist literature, using her craft to explore themes of independence, love, and personal growth.
Contents
- Principal Works
- Rich, Adrienne (Vol. 7)
- Rich, Adrienne (Vol. 3)
- Rich, Adrienne (Vol. 6)
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Rich, Adrienne (Vol. 11)
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Motherhood: A 'Primal Agony'?
(summary)
In the following essay, Anne Bernays critiques Adrienne Rich's "Of Woman Born" for its intense portrayal of the challenges and societal pressures of motherhood, arguing that while Rich effectively documents the institutional injustices against mothers, her work is ultimately limited by its lack of focus on children and its failure to reconcile her roles as mother and poet.
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Adrienne Rich: 'Face to Face'
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In the following essay, David Kalstone examines Adrienne Rich's poetic evolution, emphasizing her engagement with feminism, the exploration of women's experiences, and the tension between personal and political themes, while highlighting her use of imagery and language to articulate the complexities of identity, isolation, and the pursuit of dialogue and understanding.
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The Poetry is the Power
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In the following essay, Myra Stark examines Adrienne Rich's poetry as a critique of patriarchal powerlessness, exploring themes of self-discovery and power redefinition, and highlighting Rich's use of modern metaphors to illustrate women's quest for autonomy and strength.
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Unfinished Women
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In the following essay, Atwood examines Adrienne Rich's poetry collection "The Dream of a Common Language," highlighting its themes of transcendence from pain, exploration of female identity beyond prescribed labels, and the poet's effort to salvage history to affirm life in a world marked by oppression.
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Woman Freed
(summary)
In the following essay, Laura E. Casari discusses Adrienne Rich's Of Woman Born, highlighting how Rich examines the powerlessness of women in a patriarchal society through both historical context and personal experience, ultimately urging women to envision and collaboratively build a world that is truly their own.
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Stephen Yenser
(summary)
In the following essay, Stephen Yenser argues that Adrienne Rich's The Dream of a Common Language: Poems 1974–1977 is a powerful yet flawed work that explores themes of female identity and societal oppression, balancing profound insights with occasionally reductive judgments that complicate its pursuit of a unified poetic language.
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Motherhood: A 'Primal Agony'?
(summary)
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Rich, Adrienne (Vol. 18)
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Adrienne Rich: 'Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution'
(summary)
In the following essay, Vendler critiques Adrienne Rich's "Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution" for its partisan feminist perspective, arguing that while Rich's reflections on motherhood offer valuable insights, they are marred by an uncritical sentimentality and exclusivity towards alternative views, ultimately highlighting the complexity of feminist discourse in literature.
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The Mirrored Vision of Adrienne Rich
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In the following essay, Susan R. Van Dyne examines Adrienne Rich's poetry, highlighting how Rich's evolving style reflects a tension between artistic control and emotional complexity, as well as her shifting identity shaped by feminist ideologies, which serve as a mechanism for self-exploration rather than simple political advocacy.
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A Poet's Feminist Prose
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In the following essay, Ellen Moers examines Adrienne Rich's collection "On Lies, Secrets, and Silence," highlighting her masterful prose and insightful feminist critiques, particularly her exploration of lesbianism and patriarchal society, while noting that despite the essays' brilliance, they lack acknowledgment of the feminist movement's achievements.
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On Lies, Secrets, and Silence
(summary)
In the following essay, Joanna Russ contends that Adrienne Rich's On Lies, Secrets, and Silence marks a pivotal shift towards a woman-centered discourse, challenging traditional "humanism" and offering an unflinching critique of societal injustices while maintaining integrity and clarity as its core virtues.
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Books and the Arts: 'On Lies, Secrets and Silence'
(summary)
In the following essay, Barbara Grizzuti Harrison critiques Adrienne Rich's work for its ideological rigidity, arguing that it oversimplifies complex truths and stifles philosophical inquiry, yet acknowledges Rich's talent as a poet, particularly in her insightful writing on Emily Dickinson.
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Backward into the Future
(summary)
In the following essay, Carol Muske examines Adrienne Rich's "The Dream of a Common Language" as an exploration of alternative poetics and a new "woman" language that challenges traditional linguistic and cultural norms, highlighting Rich's radical departure from male-dominated literary conventions and her integration of personal, political, and poetic transformations.
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Rich Woman, Poor Man: The Dream of a Common Language
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In the following essay, Barbara L. Estrin explores the themes of choice, self-determination, and the struggle for identity in Adrienne Rich's The Dream of a Common Language, arguing that the collection transcends feminist concerns to address broader existential questions about independence, love, and the capacity for personal growth.
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Adrienne Rich: 'Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution'
(summary)
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Rich, Adrienne (Vol. 125)
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Philoctetes Radicalized: 'Twenty-one love Poems and the Lyric Career of Adrienne Rich
(summary)
In the following essay, McGuirk situates Twenty-one Love Poems in 'a context of poetics as ideology,' exposing 'the ideological limitations of a poetic mode' and theorizing a method of 'reading lyric in general and Rich's lyric in particular.'
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The Dream of a Common Language: Vietnam Poetry as Reformation of Language and Feeling in the Poems of Adrienne Rich
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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 version of the truth about war.
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Contradictions: Tracking Adrienne Rich's Poetry
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In the following essay, Templeton provides an overview of the major trends and themes of criticism in Rich's poetry.
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Art and AIDS; or, How Will Culture Cure You?
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In the essay below, Hammer meditates on various aspects of the relation between 'culture' and 'AIDS'—between aesthetics and sexuality—by comparing Rich's 'In Memoriam: D. K.' and James Merrill's 'Farewell Performance.' This essay addresses the question through a reading of two poems, both elegies for the literary critic David Kalstone, whose death from AIDS-related causes provokes a troubled meditation on the relation between culture and AIDS. The instability of the relation between culture and AIDS in these poems structures the ambivalent relations between the poets and their friend, including grief and fear.
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Wrestling with the Mother and Father: 'His' and 'Her' in Adrienne Rich
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Below, Flowers ponders the significance of Rich's substitution of the 'experiential, subjective, personal' feminine pronoun she for the 'analytical, objective, universal' masculine pronoun he in her poem 'Afterward,' elucidating the consequence in relation to both feminist criticism specifically and literary criticism in general.
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Brightening the Landscape
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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.
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Poetic Anger
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In the review below, Donoghue faults the themes and tone of Dark Fields of the Republic, claiming that "each of the poems is interesting mainly because [Rich] wrote it."
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Rich's 'Autumn Equinox'
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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."
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Philoctetes Radicalized: 'Twenty-one love Poems and the Lyric Career of Adrienne Rich
(summary)
- Further Reading