Who is Adrienne Rich?

Adrienne Cecile Rich

Adrienne Cecile Rich is an American poet, essayist and feminist. She has been called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century."[1]  Her father, the renowned pathologist Arnold Rice Rich, was a professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins Medical School and her mother, Helen Jones Rich, was a concert pianist.  Rich gained her college education at Radcliffe College, Harvard, where she focused primarily on poetry and writing, encountering no women teachers at all.[2] In 1951, her last year at college, Rich's first collection of poetry, A Change of World, was selected by the senior poet W.H. Auden for the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award; he went on to write the introduction to the published volume. Following her graduation, Rich received a Guggenheim Fellowship, to study in Oxford for a year. Following a visit to Florence, she decided to cut short her study at Oxford and spend her remaining time in Europe writing and exploring Italy.[3]

This woman of privilege married Alfred Haskell Conrad, an economics professor at Harvard University, in 1953.  They settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts and had three sons - David in 1955, Paul in 1957 and Jacob in 1959.  She published her second volume, The Diamond Cutters in 1955, a collection she says she wish had not been published.[4]  Rich published her third collection of poems,  Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law, which was a more personal work examining her female identity, reflecting the increasing tensions she experienced as a wife and mother in the 1950s, marking a substantial change in Rich's style and subject matter. In her 1982 essay Split at the Root: An Essay on Jewish Identity, Rich states "The experience of motherhood was eventually to radicalize me." The book met with harsh reviews. She comments, "I was seen as 'bitter' and 'personal'; and to be personal was to be disqualified, and that was very shaking because I'd really gone out on a limb ...I realized I'd gotten slapped over the wrist, and I didn't attempt that kind of thing again for a long time."[5]

She continued her travels during 1961 and 1962 with a second Guggenheim Fellowship, to work at the Netherlands Economic Institute.[6] In 1964, Rich joined the New Left and in 1966, Rich moved with her family to New York, becoming involved in anti-war, civil rights and feminist activism; her husband took a teaching position at City College of New York.[7] Rich's activism and increasing politicization are reflected the poems in her next three collections Necessities of Life (1966), Leaflets (1969), and The Will to Change (1971), also highlighting an expanding interest in poetic form. Rich, from this point forward, became increasingly represented with the women's movement.[8] From 1967, Rich held positions at Swarthmore College and Columbia University School of the Arts and from 1968, with City College of New York. Increasingly militant, Rich hosted anti-Vietnam and Black Panther fundraising parties at their apartment; tensions began to split the marriage, Conrad fearing that his wife had lost her mind.[9] The couple separated in mid- 1970 and shortly afterwards, in October, Conrad drove into woods and shot himself. [10] [11]

Rich's feminist position crystallized in her coming out as a lesbian in 1976, the year she published the controversial volume Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution.  It is from this book that I will share my thoughts. 

Selected Awards and Honors

• Yale Younger Poets Award (1950) for A Change of World.
• Guggenheim Fellowship 1952
• National Institute of Arts and Letters Award (1960)
• Shelley Memorial Award (1970)
• National Book Award for Poetry (1974) for Diving into the Wreck
• Inaugural Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize (1986)
• Honorary doctorate from Harvard University (1989)
• National Poetry Association Award for Distinguished Service to the Art of Poetry (1989)
• William Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement (for gay or lesbian writing) (1990)
• Common Wealth Award of Distinguished Service (1991)
• Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize (1992)
• Poets' Prize (1992) for Atlas of the Difficult World
• Frost Medal (1992)
• Academy of American Poets Fellowship (1992)
• MacArthur Fellowship (1994)
• Wallace Stevens Award (1996)
• National Medal of Arts (1997) (refused)
• Lifetime Achievement Award from the Lannan Foundation (1999)
• Lifetime Recognition Award from the Griffin Poetry Prize (2010)

http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/adrienne_rich

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrienne_Rich

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[1] Nelson, Cary, editor. Anthology of Modern American Poetry. Oxford University Press. 2000

[2] Martin, Wendy (1984) An American triptych: Anne Bradstreet, Emily Dickinson, Adrienne Rich The University of North Carolina Press p174 ISBN 0807841129

[3] Guardian article, profile: "Poet and pioneer". 15 June 2002. Accessed 2010-08-10

[4] Guardian article, profile: "Poet and pioneer". 15 June 2002. Accessed 2010-08-10

[5] Guardian article, profile: "Poet and pioneer". 15 June 2002. Accessed 2010-08-10

[6] Shuman , R. Baird (2002) Great American Writers: Twentieth Century. Marshall Cavendish

[7] Shuman , R. Baird (2002) Great American Writers: Twentieth Century. Marshall Cavendish

[8] Shuman , R. Baird (2002) Great American Writers: Twentieth Century. Marshall Cavendish

[9] Guardian article, profile: "Poet and pioneer". 15 June 2002. Accessed 2010-08-10

[10] Guardian article, profile: "Poet and pioneer". 15 June 2002. Accessed 2010-08-10

[11] Shuman , R. Baird (2002) Great American Writers: Twentieth Century. Marshall Cavendish