A woman in a patriarchal society such as ours, Rich has said, "in which males hold dominant power and determine what part females shall or shall not play," is defined by powerlessness. In her poetry Rich probes the effects of such a society on women and moves toward personal and political ways of breaking out of it. An early poem, "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers," examines the life of a woman dominated, indeed "terrified by men." Creating in her needlepoint tigers a vision of masterful and assured life, Aunt Jennifer cannot escape the powers that confine her: her hands even after death are "still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by." "Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law" explores the lives of women whom men "dominate, tyrannize, choose, or reject," women who gain identity only through their relationships to men. The poem presents the consequences of such powerlessness: minds "moldering like wedding-cake" …; energies turned inward or erupting angrily at other women; women who either die as complete adults at fifteen or are labelled and dismissed as "harpy, shrew and whore." "Time," Rich reminds us, "is male" and selects for praise women who are beautiful and nurturing, who shave their legs and iron their clothing—and that of others…. (p. 34)

But Adrienne Rich does more in her poetry than merely examine the consequences of powerlessness. "What it means to be a man, what it means to be a woman … is perhaps the major subject of poetry from here on," she has said. A number of Rich's major poems deal with this process of discovery—with woman's search for an authentic self and a freely chosen life. Both the themes and the imagery of these poems reflect the author's concern with the subject of power.

"The Roofwalker," from Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law, focuses on these birth pangs. It contrasts the life the poet has rejected with the life she is struggling to bring into being. The old life is represented by a traditional image; a woman reading in the lamplight seen against cream wallpaper. The metaphor, recalling Erickson's belief that women are defined by their inner space, suggests an existence secure, protected, if essentially vicarious. But such a life is one which the poet" "didn't choose"; the space is "a roof I can't live under."… To present her search for the new life, Rich chooses an untraditional metaphor—the construction worker. Engaged in a dangerous and difficult occupation, the roofwalkers are builders and doers, powerful "Giants," men who master their environment with strength and tools. The poet, too, is a construction worker. In "When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision," Rich speaks of women becoming their own midwives, "creating themselves anew." But the endeavor to build a new life leaves her feeling naked and exposed, just as the roofwalkers are depicted as silhouetted against the sky, alone and vulnerable. Even her tools "are the wrong ones." The choice of imagery reveals the nature of the life she is seeking. It is to be an existence created consciously by choice, constructed, not like the old life, unthinkingly accepted. If the creation is perilous, it is also heroic.

"Diving Into the Wreck" is a more recent poem which also explores the birth of the transformed self. The underwater ruin, a metaphor for the dead self and the dead civilization which created it, is the scene for the primal search. The archetypal descent into the underworld takes place, however, complete with the apparatus of modern technology. The diver is equipped with body armor, knife, mask, camera, and a book of myths. Like "The Roofwalker," the poem stresses the powerful nature of the diver's mission, her courageous exposure to the unknown element. Learning to surrender to the sea, the poet discovers the ability in her body to survive in the new element. (pp. 34-5)

Rich's metaphors for the birth of the transformed self—the construction worker raising a new roof, the diver descending into blackness—are characteristic of her poetry in that they are drawn from the tools and technology of our time. In "Trying To Talk To a Man," the explosive and difficult relationship between the man and the woman is developed through the image of bomb testing. Just as the emergencies—"laceration, thirst"—are transferred from the public and technological world to the personal one, so is the power of the process. Addressing the man, Rich says, "Your dry heat feels like power" …; the ultimate testing is internal, the danger is in "ourselves." (p. 35)

A number of poems use an untraditional metaphor for the soul's journey, drawn also from the world of modern technology—the helicopter. Lying on a blanket in the forest during a moment of happiness and peace, the poet in "In the Woods" views "My soul, my helicopter" leaving her body in a Whitman-like flight…. In "Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law" the poet hails the new woman who plunges "breasted and glancing through the currents, / at least as beautiful as any boy / or helicopter, / poised still coming, / her fine blades making the air wince."… The image is of flight and freedom, and discovery, but the stress is on the poets and energies released in the process.

What emerges from a reading of such poems, poems which must be viewed as attempts "to create something / That can't be used to keep us passive," is a redefinition of the nature of power. Traditionally women's fragmented lives have dissipated their energies; their position has denied them power…. Rich spoke of the times "When I'm in a group of women where I have a sense of real energy flowing and of power in the best sense—not power of domination but just access to sources …" This definition of power "in the best sense" as energies released, not as domination achieved, provides the impetus behind a number of Rich's poems which focus on the lives of strong and competent women.

In "Planetarium," Rich celebrates Caroline Herschel, the astronomer, "levitating into the night sky / riding the polished lenses," discovering in her ninety-eight years, eight comets. The absorbed and intent woman, "in the snow / among the Clocks and instruments / or measuring the ground with poles" … becomes a model and a hope for the poet who is herself searching to "translate pulsations / into images for the relief of the body / and the reconstruction of the mind."… Just as Caroline Herschel worked with electrical energies and impulses, the poet sees herself "bombarded," standing in the "direct / path of a battery of signals."… The powerful woman holds out a hope for the poet of the possibility of success. (p. 36)

"I Dream I'm the Death of Orpheus" presents the poet as "a woman in the prime of life, with certain powers," having developed, for example, "the nerves of a panther."… But these powers are "severely limited" by the unseen authorities. The poet is condemned to feel "the fullness of her powers / at the precise moment when she must not use them." Her "mission" is clear: "if obeyed to the letter" it will "leave her intact." Yet the confusions and ambivalences inherent in her situation bewilder and frustrate her.

One aspect of the powerful women in [these] poems is their penetrating clarity of vision…. But the poet in these … poems, is not only a seer, she is also a woman on a quest…. The poet is strengthened in this quest for the new self and the new life by the women who are centers of power and energy in the poems. That they exist and can be invoked is perhaps the reason the "mission" can be undertaken at all.

The poetry of Adrienne Rich, then, concerned with discovering what woman has been and can be, is necessarily involved with the subject of power: with the examination of the results of women's powerlessness; with a redefinition of the nature of power; with the search for new sources of power for women; and with a celebration of the passing of power from men alone to both men and women. (pp. 36-7)