Poems by Adrienne Rich: Adrienne Rich was a renowned American Poet, Scholar, and Teacher. Her poetry style is a mixture of feminist and social rights. At the start of her career, she adopted a traditional style but later changed into a profound feminist and civil rights. Her poems played a vital in the development of women in society, her poems reflect the day-to-day struggle of women.
Also Read: Motivational Poems in English
1-Poems by Adrienne Rich: Storm Warnings
The glass has been falling all the afternoon,
And knowing better than the instrument
What winds are walking overhead, what zone
Of gray unrest is moving across the land,
I leave the book upon a pillowed chair
And walk from window to closed window, watching
Boughs strain against the sky
And think again, as often when the air
Moves inward toward a silent core of waiting,
How with a single purpose time has traveled
By secret currents of the undiscerned
Into this polar realm. Weather abroad
And weather in the heart alike come on
Regardless of prediction.
Between foreseeing and averting change
Lies all the mastery of elements
Which clocks and weatherglasses cannot alter.
Time in the hand is not control of time,
Nor shattered fragments of an instrument
A proof against the wind; the wind will rise,
We can only close the shutters.
I draw the curtains as the sky goes black
And set a match to candles sheathed in glass
Against the keyhole draught, the insistent whine
Of weather through the unsealed aperture.
This is our sole defense against the season;
These are the things that we have learned to do
Who live in troubled regions.
Explanation :
The poem “Storm Warnings” shows the coming of a storm and the people’s preparation to protect themselves from the storm. The storm in the poem portrays the problems in the lives of people and the closing of the windows and gate from the storm shows the preparation to protect themself from life uncertainties. The poet shows the uncertainty of life and the problems in the form of a storm.
2- Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers
Aunt Jennifer’s tigers prance across a screen,
Bright topaz denizens of a world of green.
They do not fear the men beneath the tree;
They pace in sleek chivalric certainty.
Aunt Jennifer’s fingers fluttering through her wool
Find even the ivory needle hard to pull.
The massive weight of Uncle’s wedding band
Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer’s hand.
When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie
Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by.
The tigers in the panel that she made
Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid.
Explanation :
“Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers” is a short poem but has a very compact effect on the readers. The poem shows a character named Aunt Jennifer, trapped in an oppressive marriage. The poet observes her Aunt Jennifer who is in a traditional marriage and wants to gain freedom from her toxic husband. The tiger represents the sense of freedom and independence from her trapped life.
3-Poems by Adrienne Rich: Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law
You, once a belle in Shreveport,
with henna-colored hair, skin like a peachbud,
still have your dresses copied from that time,
and play a Chopin prelude
called by Cortot: “Delicious recollections
float like perfume through the memory.”
Your mind now, moldering like wedding-cake,
heavy with useless experience, rich
with suspicion, rumor, fantasy,
crumbling to pieces under the knife-edge
of mere fact. In the prime of your life.
Explanation :
The poem “Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law” is a complex poem that revolves around the themes of the dynamics of relationships. Pome shows the difficult life of a Daughter in Law of the house, and the changes she had to make in her life. The poem beautifully shows all the difficulties and changes, the poet says that the daughter-in-law was once a free spirit and now she is in a different stage of life.
4- Living in Sin
She had thought the studio would keep itself;
no dust upon the furniture of love.
Half heresy, to wish the taps less vocal,
the panes relieved of grime. A plate of pears,
a piano with a Persian shawl, a cat
stalking the picturesque amusing mouse
had risen at his urging.
Not that at five each separate stair would writhe
under the milkman’s tramp; that morning light
so coldly would delineate the scraps
of last night’s cheese and three sepulchral bottles;
that on the kitchen shelf among the saucers
a pair of beetle-eyes would fix her own—
envoy from some village in the moldings…
Explanation :
The poem “Living in Sin” explores the themes of sadness and disappointment.
The poem shows a woman who has imagined a domestic life with her lover but everything she imagined turned to dust when she realized her love has fallen short of her romantic ideals. The poems show societal judgment and personal needs beautifully. Overall the shows how day-to-day living can vanish romantic desire.
5-Poems by Adrienne Rich: I Dream I’m the Death of Orpheus
I am walking rapidly through striations of light and dark thrown under an arcade.
I am a woman in the prime of life, with certain powers
and those powers severely limited
by authorities whose faces I rarely see.
I am a woman in the prime of life
driving her dead poet in a black Rolls-Royce
through a landscape of twilight and thorns.
A woman with a certain mission
which if obeyed to the letter will leave her intact.
A woman with the nerves of a panther
woman with contacts among Hell’s Angels
a woman feeling the fullness of her powers
at the precise moment when she must not use them
a woman sworn to lucidity
who sees through the mayhem, the smoky fires
of these underground streets
her dead poet learning to walk backward against the wind
on the wrong side of the mirror.
Explanation :
The poem “I Dream I’m the Death of Orpheus” is based on the theme of nature and time. The poet says that time is ever going and can not stop, as the person goes on with time they will eventually age and gain experience. The poem shows a deep connection of human beings with nature and the world.
6- Diving into the Wreck
First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.
There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise,
it is a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.
I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.
First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
it pumps my blood with power
the sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.
And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.
I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed
the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.
This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he
whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
obscurely inside barrels
half-wedged and left to rot
we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass
We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.
Explanation :
The poem “Diving into the Wreck” is a metaphorical journey of self-discovery, feminism, and reclaiming identity. Rich employs the imagery of scuba diving and exploring a wrecked ship to symbolize the process of delving into the past, confronting historical and personal traumas, and emerging with a newfound sense of self.
What is Adrienne Rich’s most famous poem?
“Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers” is Adrienne Rich’s most famous poem.
7- Planetarium
A woman in the shape of a monster
a monster in the shape of a woman
the skies are full of the
a woman ‘in the snow
among the Clocks and instruments
or measuring the ground with poles’
in her 98 years to discover
8 comets
she whom the moon ruled
like us
levitating into the night sky
riding the polished lenses
Galaxies of women, there
doing penance for impetuousness
ribs chilled
in those spaces of the mind
An eye,
‘virile, precise and absolutely certain’
from the mad webs of Uranusborg
encountering the NOVA
every impulse of light exploding
from the core
as life flies out of us
Tycho whispering at last
‘Let me not seem to have lived in vain’
What we see, we see
and seeing is changing
the light that shrivels a mountain
and leaves a man alive
Heartbeat of the pulsar
heart sweating through my body
The radio impulse
pouring in from Taurus
I am bombarded yet I stand
I have been standing all my life in the
direct path of a battery of signals
the most accurately transmitted most
untranslatable language in the universe
I am a galactic cloud so deep so into-
luted that a light wave could take 15
years to travel through me And has
taken I am an instrument in the shape
of a woman trying to translate pulsations
into images for the relief of the body
and the reconstruction of the mind.
Explanation :
The poem then delves into broader themes of identity, isolation, and the search for meaning. Rich contemplates the vastness of the universe and the insignificance of individual lives against the cosmic backdrop. She draws parallels between Herschel’s discovery of celestial bodies and the human endeavor to find purpose in a vast, mysterious world.
Is Adrienne Rich a feminist?
Yes, Adrienne Rich is a renowned feminist.
8- The Phenomenology of Anger
The freedom of the wholly mad
to smear & play with her madness
write with her fingers dipped in it
the length of a room
which is not, of course, the freedom
you have, walking on Broadway
to stop & turn back or go on
10 blocks; 20 blocks
but feels enviable maybe
to the compromised
curled in the placenta of the real
which was to feed & which is strangling her.
Trying to light a log that’s lain in the damp
as long as this house has stood:
even with dry sticks I can’t get started
even with thorns.
I twist last year into a knot of old headlines
—this rose won’t bloom.
How does a pile of rags the machinist wiped his hands on
feel in its cupboard, hour upon hour?
Each day during the heat-wave
they took the temperature of the haymow.
I huddled fugitive
in the warm sweet simmer of the hay
Explanation :
In the poem “The Phenomenology of Anger” the poet explores the complex emotion of anger and its transformative power. The title itself refers to a branch of philosophy that explores human consciousness and experiences, emphasizing the depth of Rich’s exploration.
What is the main theme of Adrienne Rich’s poems?
Feminism and Women’s empowerment is the main theme of Adrienne Rich Pomes.
9- What Kind of Times Are These
There’s a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill
and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows
near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted
who disappeared into those shadows.
I’ve walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don’t be fooled
this isn’t a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,
our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,
its own ways of making people disappear.
I won’t tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods
meeting the unmarked strip of light—
ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:
I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.
And I won’t tell you where it is, so why do I tell you
anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these
to have you listen at all, it’s necessary
to talk about trees.
Explanation :
In the poem “What Kind of Times Are These”, the poet reflects on the political and social climate, exploring themes of uncertainty, moral ambiguity, and the search for truth.
The poem opens with a tone of skepticism, questioning the authenticity of the times the speaker is living in. Rich uses vivid imagery and metaphors, including references to nature and historical events, to convey a sense of disquiet and confusion.
What religion does Adrienne Rich follow?
Adrienne Rich was a Jew.
10- Power
Living in the earth-deposits of our history
Today a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earth
one bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-old
cure for fever or melancholy a tonic
for living on this earth in the winters of this climate.
Today I was reading about Marie Curie:
she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness
her body bombarded for years by the element
she had purified
It seems she denied to the end
the source of the cataracts on her eyes
the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends
till she could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencil
She died a famous woman denying
her wounds
denying
her wounds came from the same source as her power.
Explanation :
The poem explores power dynamics, particularly focusing on the power struggle within intimate relationships, where one partner often seeks to dominate the other. Rich questions the abuse of power and the consequences of subjugating others.
11- From an Atlas of the Difficult World
I know you are reading this poem
late, before leaving your office
of the one intense yellow lamp-spot and the darkening window
in the lassitude of a building faded to quiet
long after rush-hour. I know you are reading this poem
standing up in a bookstore far from the ocean
on a grey day of early spring, faint flakes driven
across the plains’ enormous spaces around you.
I know you are reading this poem
in a room where too much has happened for you to bear
where the bedclothes lie in stagnant coils on the bed
and the open valise speaks of flight
but you cannot leave yet. I know you are reading this poem
as the underground train loses momentum and before running
up the stairs
toward a new kind of love
your life has never allowed.
I know you are reading this poem by the light
of the television screen where soundless images jerk and slide
while you wait for the newscast from the intifada.
I know you are reading this poem in a waiting-room
of eyes met and unmeeting, of identity with strangers.
I know you are reading this poem by fluorescent light
in the boredom and fatigue of the young who are counted out,
count themselves out, at too early an age. I know
you are reading this poem through your failing sight, the thick
lens enlarging these letters beyond all meaning yet you read on
because even the alphabet is precious.
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.
I know you are reading this poem which is not in your language
guessing at some words while others keep you reading
and I want to know which words they are.
I know you are reading this poem listening for something, torn
between bitterness and hope
turning back once again to the task you cannot refuse.
I know you are reading this poem because there is nothing else
left to read
there where you have landed, stripped as you are.
Explanation :
The poem “From an Atlas of the Difficult World” is a complex exploration of various themes, including feminism, political activism, social justice, and the struggles of women in different parts of the world. Rich weaves together diverse narratives and experiences, drawing attention to the challenges faced by women in different cultures and environments. Through vivid imagery and powerful language, she creates a mosaic of the world’s difficulties, highlighting the resilience and strength of women amid adversity.
12- Integrity
A wild patience has taken me this far
as if I had to bring to shore
a boat with a spasmodic outboard motor
old sweaters, nets, spray-mottled books
tossed in the prow
some kind of sun burning my shoulder-blades.
Splashing the oarlocks. Burning through.
Your fore-arms can get scalded, licked with pain
in a sun blotted like unspoken anger
behind a casual mist.
The length of daylight
this far north, in this
forty-ninth year of my life
is critical.
The light is critical: of me, of this
long-dreamed, involuntary landing
on the arm of an inland sea.
The glitter of the shoal
depleting into shadow
I recognize: the stand of pines
violet-black really, green in the old postcard
but really I have nothing but myself
to go by; nothing
stands in the realm of pure necessity
except what my hands can hold.
Nothing but myself?….My selves.
After so long, this answer.
As if I had always known
I steer the boat in, simply.
The motor dying on the pebbles
cicadas taking up the hum
dropped in the silence.
Anger and tenderness: my selves.
And now I can believe they breathe in me
as angels, not polarities.
Anger and tenderness: the spider’s genius
to spin and weave in the same action
from her own body, anywhere —
even from a broken web.
The cabin in the stand of pines
is still for sale. I know this. Know the print
of the last foot, the hand that slammed and locked the door,
then stopped to wreathe the rain-smashed clematis
back on the trellis
for no one’s sake except its own.
I know the chart nailed to the wallboards
the icy kettle squatting on the burner.
The hands that hammered in those nails
emptied that kettle one last time
are these two hands
and they have caught the baby leaping
from between trembling legs
and they have worked the vacuum aspirator
and stroked the sweated temples
and steered the boat there through this hot
misblotted sunlight, critical light
imperceptibly scalding
the skin these hands will also salve.
Explanation :
The poem “Integrity” explores the struggle to maintain one’s authenticity in the face of societal pressures and expectations. Rich delves into the complexities of personal identity and the challenges of remaining steadfast in one’s beliefs and principles. Through her powerful and evocative language, she emphasizes the significance of embracing one’s true nature and moral values, even in the face of adversity.
13- Twenty-One Love Poems
I wake up in your bed. I know I have been dreaming.
Much earlier, the alarm broke us from each other,
you’ve been at your desk for hours. I know what I dreamed:
our friend the poet comes into my room
where I’ve been writing for days,
drafts, carbons, poems are scattered everywhere,
and I want to show her one poem
which is the poem of my life. But I hesitate,
and wake. You’ve kissed my hair
to wake me. I dreamed you were a poem,
I say, a poem I wanted to show someone . . .
and I laugh and fall dreaming again
of the desire to show you to everyone I love,
to move openly together
in the pull of gravity, which is not simple,
which carries the feathered grass a long way down the upbreathing air.
Explanation :
“Twenty-One Love Poems” is a series of poems by Adrienne Rich, featured in her collection “The Dream of a Common Language,” published in 1978. This sequence of poems explores themes of love, desire, and intimacy within the context of same-sex relationships, specifically Rich’s own experiences as a lesbian woman. The poems are deeply personal and reflect a passionate and nuanced exploration of love’s complexities.
14- A Valediction Forbidding Mourning
My swirling wants. Your frozen lips.
The grammar turned and attacked me.
Themes, written under duress.
Emptiness of the nations.
They gave me a drug that slowed the healing of wounds.
I want you to see this before I leave:
the experience of repetition as death
the failure of criticism to locate the pain
the poster in the bus that said:
my bleeding is under control.
A red plant in a cemetery of plastic wreaths.
A last attempt: the language is a dialect called metaphor.
These images go unglossed: hair, glacier, flashlight.
when I think of a landscape I am thinking of a time.
When I talk of taking a trip I mean forever.
I could say: those mountains have a meaning
but further than that I could not say.
To do something very common, in my own way.
Explanation :
“A Valediction Forbidding Mourning” is a famous poem by John Donne, written in the 17th century. The poem is often considered one of the most beautiful metaphysical love poems in English literature. In this work, Donne addresses his wife, expressing his deep love and devotion to her. The poem’s title suggests that it is a farewell message, but Donne argues against mourning or sadness at their separation.
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