Poet Adrianne Rich Well-Versed in History and Sexuality

Author: Chase Kvasnak

"It's the war, not us, that's moving like shade on a balcony" remarked poet Adrienne Rich at her Oct. 4 poetry reading which attracted some 300 students, faculty and community members to Dana Auditorium.
Rich was introduced by Roman Graf, associate provost for institutional diversity, who noted that she is the recipient of a number of awards, including the 1996 Tanning Award for Mastery in the Art of Poetry, the Lannan Foundation's 1999 Lifetime Achievement Award, the Academy of Poetry Fellowship, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Common Wealth Award in Literature, the National Book Award, two Guggenheims and the MacArthur Fellowship. Rich is also the author of 15 volumes of poetry and four books of non fiction prose.
Thursday's readings included older works, poems from her newest collection "Fox," as well as some unpublished poetry.
Rich silenced the full auditorium with her first reading of an excerpt from "An Atlas of the Difficult World."
Rich gave a brief introduction to nearly every poem she read, providing the audience with short breaks between her captivating readings.
On Friday morning Rich also spoke in Mitchell Green lounge answering questions from students ranging from her writing to Sept. 11. In a synthesis of these two events, this is what Rich had to say:
while the loneliest of lonely / American decades goes aground / on the postwar rock… What a girl I was then what a body / ready for breaking open like lobster…
My early life was all about silence. The issue of silence concerned me a great deal … What had been presented as natural was in fact political. This made me look at other things and question them such as gender and sexual preference … There was great deal of silence in 1947 about nuclear bombs and the liberation of death camps … So much of my education had to be self-education … and I was writing poetry … A man that was in one of my writing courses liked my poetry and suggested that I submit my work to Yale Younger Poets series … I got an envelope addressed in green ink from W.H. Auden who also gave me instructions … I was married; a radicalizing experience. My first son was born 1959…
In the 50's a woman questioning her sexuality was erotic and rebellious.
I know you are reading this poem as you pace beside the stove / warming milk, a crying child on your shoulder, a book in your / hand / because life is short and you too are thirsty
My process of writing changed over time, when I had small children I would scribble notes … At this point, I think I would say as a poet I am always writing, but it is not always on paper … partly by hand, partly by computer … a lot of drafts … I never pick a poem till it's had a cooling off period, month to six months, to a year.
If I've reached for your lines (I have) / like letter letters from the dead that stir the nerves /dowsed you for a springhead / to water my thirst…
I think of poetry as a kind of theatre of voices ... Everything flows through you…but I am more interested in taking the intimate personal experience and connecting it to the larger realm of events.
Serving and protesting always the motives of my government / thinking we'd scratch out a place where poetry own subversive shape / grew out of nowhere here where skin could lie on skin a place outside the ruins / Can't say I was mistaken To be so brusied in the soft organ stains of consciousness
For a long time I've been writing out of concern about what it means to be a citizen of this all-powerful country … how the personal life is being impinged … upon our knowledge, lack of knowledge, of what is being done in our name.
My body a word / in need of translation / a city divided / whose sacred places / are merely reasons for slaughter /Translate me / carry me / across the river / Let me translate myself.
For more poems written by Adrienne Rich, critical readings of her works, audio recordings of Rich reading her poetry, interviews with the poet and other articles pertaining to "one of the country's most distinguished poets," according to "Norton Poets Online," visit nortonpoets.com.