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In the late 1960s, Rich, along with her husband, became active in radical politics, especially protests against the Vietnam War. In addition, she taught minority students in urban New York City, an experience that began her lifelong commitment to education, a subject that would return in her essays. Not surprisingly, her poetry reflected this intense interest in politics. This later verse features fragmented language, raw images, and looser form. At this time, Rich also began identifying herself and her work with the growing feminist movement; she also identified as a lesbian. This lesbian consciousness led to the development of poems such as “Transcendental Etude” and “The Floating Poem” that dealt explicitly with lesbian love and sex. In the 1970s, Rich began exploring feminism through essay writing. Her most famous collection of prose, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution, combines personal accounts, research, and theory to reveal her thoughts on feminism. In the 1980s, Rich wrote a number of dialogue poems, the best-known of which is her “Twenty-One Love Poems.” This series modernizes the Elizabethan sonnet sequences written by men to idealized women by directing the poems to an unnamed female lover. Other poems, penned to women like Willa Cather, Ethel Rosenberg, and the poet’s grandmothers, explore further aspects of Rich’s identity, including her experience as a Jewish woman.
Rich’s work is known for its political radicalism and candid exploration of motherhood, feminism, lesbianism, and Jewish identity. Her role as poet, essayist, and critic has earned her an important place in contemporary feminism.
[1617] Anonymous, Emily Dickinson (n.d.),
courtesy of Amherst College Library.
Portrait of Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) sitting at table. Until recently, this was the only known image of Dickinson, a recluse who rarely left her home in Amherst, Massachusetts. Dickinson influenced many twentieth-century poets, including Sylvia Plath and Adrienne Rich.
[4312] Anonymous, Adrienne Rich (c. 1975),
courtesy of the Library of Congress [LC-USZ62-103575].
A feminist poet and activist, Rich challenges assumptions of gender and sexuality in her work and questions the nature of power. In “Planetarium,” she writes, “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.”
[6932] Student Mobilization Committee to End the War in S.E. Asia, Pull Him Out Now: Join with the Hundreds and Thousands of Students, GI’s, Women, Unionists, Puerto Ricans, Gay People . . . (c. 1970),
courtesy of the Library of Congress. Political poster protesting U.S. military involvement in Vietnam.
The antiwar movement linked and encouraged a number of other movements, including the civil rights movement, the Chicano movement, and the farm workers’ movement. Many American poets protested the war, including Adrienne Rich, Robert Lowell, and Allen Ginsberg.
[7361] Anonymous, Vietnam War Protesters (1967),
courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration [NRE-21-KANSWICHCR-CR928- WICH1895].
Wichita, Kansas, protest against the Vietnam War. Antiwar protests were major cultural events in the 1960s and early 1970s. Many writers and artists participated, including Adrienne Rich, whose work became more explicitly political during this time.