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  #1  
Unread 03-28-2012, 08:22 PM
Quincy Lehr's Avatar
Quincy Lehr Quincy Lehr is offline
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Default Rest in Peace, Adrienne Rich

I wasn't your biggest fan by a mile, but you had a principled integrity that wouldn't even occur to most poets, and I always admired you for that.

http://uchicagopress.tumblr.com/post...r-the-national
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  #2  
Unread 03-28-2012, 09:45 PM
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W.F. Lantry W.F. Lantry is offline
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A sad loss, but a literary life well lived and well written.

Background here: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/adrienne-rich

Poems and audio here: http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetrya....do?poetId=428

Best,

Bill
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Unread 03-28-2012, 10:03 PM
David Mason David Mason is offline
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I sometimes think there are two kinds of poets: the fastidious ones (Larkin, Bishop, Eliot) who only publish strong work, and other kind, who challenge and push and extend and sometimes in the course of things publish second-rate work. If Rich falls into the latter category, she is also an astonishment, a life force in contemporary American poetry. We would be poorer without her work, and not just for its politics, but also for its expression of the passionate life. Blessings on her. As the Greeks say, May the earth rest lightly upon her, and eternal be her memory.
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Unread 03-29-2012, 12:08 AM
Charlotte Innes Charlotte Innes is offline
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Oh crap, the good people are dying... Thanks for posting, Quincy. I think her work has been quite often amazing--she had such a range. I also read her essays, years ago; they meant a lot to me at the time. And I met her once at a reading at UCLA; she was lovely, took the time to chat, really sweet, although of course she could be a tiger in public life. And yes, you're right, Quincy, integrity was present in her actions and her work.

I couldn't get your link to work, but found stuff on Google about her death. Thanks, Bill, for the other links.

Peace,
Charlotte
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Unread 03-29-2012, 07:04 AM
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Janice D. Soderling Janice D. Soderling is offline
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Quote:
Rich’s work has explored issues of identity, sexuality and politics; her formally ambitious poetics have reflected her continued search for social justice, her role in the anti-war movement, and her radical feminism. Utilizing speech cadences, enjambment and irregular line and stanza lengths, Rich’s open forms have sought to include ostensibly “non-poetic” language into poetry. Best known for her politically-engaged verse from the tumultuous Vietnam-war period, Rich’s collection Diving into the Wreck: Poems 1971-1972 (1973) won the National Book Award; Rich, however, accepted it with fellow-nominees Audre Lorde and Alice Walker on behalf of all women. A noted writer of prose, Rich’s numerous essay collections, including A Human Eye: Essays on Art in Society (2009) also secured her place as one of America’s preeminent feminist thinkers.
Remember when "feminist" meant more than a yes-saying, high-heeled female on a corporate board of directors. When it meant engaged in the greater community, not afraid to buck the establishment.

Ah, the brave and capable poets of yesteryear. We mourn their passing.
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Unread 03-29-2012, 07:16 AM
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Mary Meriam Mary Meriam is offline
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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 away 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.


Adrienne Rich
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  #7  
Unread 03-29-2012, 08:19 AM
Susan d.S.'s Avatar
Susan d.S. Susan d.S. is offline
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RIP. I associate reading her with a certain time frame. I loved her bravery.
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  #8  
Unread 03-29-2012, 12:08 PM
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Mary Meriam Mary Meriam is offline
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“Poetry is above all a concentration of the power of language which is the power of our ultimate relationship to everything in the universe. It is as if forces we can lay claim to in no other way become present to us in sensuous form. The knowledge and use of this magic goes back very far; the rune, the chant, the incantation, the spell, the Kenning, sacred words, forbidden words, the naming of the child, the plant, the insect, the ocean, the configuration of stars, the snow, the sensation in the body. The ritual telling of the dream. The physical reality of the human voice; of words gouged or incised in stone or wood, woven in silk or wool, painted on vellum, or traced in sand.”

Adrienne Rich
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Unread 03-29-2012, 12:25 PM
Cally Conan-Davies Cally Conan-Davies is offline
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Thank you, Mems.

Copied and kept...

Cally
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  #10  
Unread 03-29-2012, 12:55 PM
Roger Slater Roger Slater is offline
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Song
by AR

You're wondering if I'm lonely:
OK then, yes, I'm lonely
as a plane rides lonely and level
on its radio beam, aiming
across the Rockies
for the blue-strung aisles
of an airfield on the ocean.

You want to ask, am I lonely?
Well, of course, lonely
as a woman driving across country
day after day, leaving behind
mile after mile
little towns she might have stopped
and lived and died in, lonely

If I'm lonely
it must be the loneliness
of waking first, of breathing
dawns' first cold breath on the city
of being the one awake
in a house wrapped in sleep

If I'm lonely
it's with the rowboat ice-fast on the shore
in the last red light of the year
that knows what it is, that knows it's neither
ice nor mud nor winter light
but wood, with a gift for burning
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