Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich 1929-, American poet, b. Baltimore, grad. Radcliffe, 1951. Since the 1970s her volumes of exquisitely wrought verse have increasingly reflected feminist and lesbian themes. Among her volumes of poetry are A Change of World (1951), Diving into the Wreck (1973), The Dream of a Common Language (1978), A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far (1981), Your Native Land, Your Life (1986), Time's Power (1989), and Dark Fields of the Republic (1996). Her influential volumes of feminist theory and criticism include Of Women Born (1976), On Lies, Secrets, and Silence (1979), and Blood, Bread, and Poetry (1986). Her prose reflections on the function of poetry are contained in What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics (1993).

Bibliography: See her Collected Early Poems: 1950-1970 (1993); study by C. Keyes (1986).

Rich, Adrienne (Cecille) (1929– ), American poet, essayist, and critic, born in Baltimore, graduated from Radcliffe College, and has since held a variety of academic posts. Her characteristic, fractured, free verse, frequently in lengthy sequences, began to emerge in her third collection, Snapshot of a Daughter in Law (1956). Rich's subsequent volumes keep pace with her own increasing politicization and involvement with first the anti-war movement and then lesbian/feminist politics, making them valuable representative documents of their times. Her poetry allies the personal ever more closely with the political, typically juxtaposing scenes of domestic life with reminders of horrifying instances of history. Diving into the Wreck (1971) and The Dream of a Common Language (1978) are outstanding collections, while The Fact of a Doorframe, Poems Selected and New: 1950–1984 (1984) presents much of her most achieved work. Rich's essays, particularly Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence (1981), have been seminal for her generation of feminists.