Emerging from the Wreck: Adrienne
Rich
HUM 2213: British and American Literature II
Spring 2013
Dr. Perdigao
March 25, 2013
On the tradition
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Crisis for contemporary poets—third generation of twentieth-century American
poets (Ginsberg, Bly, Rich)—that first generation were still part of the scene
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First generation as those born before 1900; between 1900 and 1920 as second; those
born after 1920 as the third
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Adrienne Rich’s “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision” (1972):
http://www.westga.edu/~aellison/Other/Rich.pdf
Adrienne Rich (1929-2012)
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Parents Helen Jones and Arnold Rich; father a professor of pathology at Johns
Hopkins University
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Rich grew up in Baltimore
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Educated at Radcliffe College
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First book of poems, A Change of World, which won Yale Younger Poets award,
published with preface written by Auden
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Guggenheim fellowship in Europe; married Alfred Conrad, economics professor at
Harvard
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Mother of three sons during 1950s, ideas of femininity during the time
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Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law (1963), poems about confinement (Heath E 1677)
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Theme of stifling women’s voices as theme within her work
Adrienne Rich (1929-2012)
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Feminine consciousness: “from self-analysis and individual accomplishment to
lesbian/feminist activism and the collective shaping of a feminist vision of
community that is perhaps strangely rooted in the Puritan ideal of the city on a hill”
(Heath E 1677)
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Personal and political
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Influenced by open styles of Pound, Williams, Levertov, confessional mode of
Lowell, Plath, Sexton, and Berryman
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1974 National Book Award, 1986 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, 1997 Tanning Prize,
1999 Lannan Foundation's Lifetime Achievement Award, two Guggenheim
fellowships, MacArthur Fellowship
Adrienne Rich (1929-2012)
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Diving into the Wreck: Poems 1971-1972 (1973); An Atlas of the Difficult World:
Poems 1988-1991 (1991); Dark Fields of the Republic: Poems, 1991-1995 (1995);
Selected Poems (1996); Midnight Salvage: Poems, 1995-1998 (1999); Fox: Poems,
1998-2000 (2001); Selected Poems (2004); Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth
(2007)