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  #21  
Unread 03-31-2012, 07:40 AM
Christopher ONeill Christopher ONeill is offline
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The thread has drifted slightly ......

My absolute favourite Adrienne Rich remains one of the first poems I ever read by her:



The Insusceptibles

Then the long sunlight lying on the sea
Fell, folded gold on gold; and slowly we
Took up our decks of cards, our parasols,
The picnic hamper and the sandblown shawls
And climbed the dunes in silence. There were two
Who lagged behind as lovers sometimes do,
And took a different road. For us the night
Was final, and by artificial light
We came indoors to sleep. No envy there
Of those who might be watching anywhere
The lustres of the summer dark, to trace
Some vagrant splinter blazing out of space.
No thought of them, save in a lower room
To leave a light for them when they should come.
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  #22  
Unread 03-31-2012, 09:16 AM
Susan McLean Susan McLean is online now
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I saw Adrienne Rich speak once when I was in grad school, in the early '80s. The audience was largely female, the talk was feminist in focus, and I know I left the room feeling energized and enlightened. Rich was one of the pioneers, one of the few female poets to be accepted by the male poetry establishment. What outsiders do when they gain that acceptance says a lot about them. They can align themselves with those in power, becoming honorary members of the in crowd and looking down on those still outside, or they can speak for those still excluded. She did the latter when it would have been much easier to do the former. And she continued to speak about specifically female experiences, which had been omitted from so much poetry before.

I like some of her poems very much and continue to teach her work in my poetry class. But she has never been one of my very favorite poets, and that has more to do with the style of her work than its content. It's hard to write poems that work for everyone all of the time. For me, her work as a feminist poet has probably had a greater impact than the poetry itself has had as a model.

Susan
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  #23  
Unread 03-31-2012, 10:11 AM
David Mason David Mason is offline
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That seems to be the only way to deal with it. Let it all in. Read as much as you can. Judge carefully. That's a Rich poem I hadn't paid attention to before, Chrisso, and I am glad to have another crack at it. I'm also very glad to see that "Song" posted by Roger. In our efforts to read as much as we can it helps to have others reading with us!

Last edited by David Mason; 03-31-2012 at 10:14 AM.
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  #24  
Unread 03-31-2012, 11:48 AM
Don Jones's Avatar
Don Jones Don Jones is offline
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These opening lines are wonderful and unorthodox:

Then the long sunlight lying on the sea
Fell, folded gold on gold; and slowly we
Took up our decks of cards


Though the poem is iambic, its first line is far from regular, only to be followed by the spectacular enjambment "sea/Fell," and then another enjambment "we/Took."

The spondee (for those who believe in such a thing) of Fell, fold at the beginning of the second line further prevents any expectation of the iambic rhythm to come.

Rich wrote much more free verse than formal. While I don't possess a culture-war objection to free verse, I wish Ms. Rich would have poured out more formal verse like this.

I love this too:

...to trace/
Some vagrant splinter blazing out of space.


Don
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  #25  
Unread 04-02-2012, 01:56 AM
Christopher ONeill Christopher ONeill is offline
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Don

All the things you said about Adrienne Rich' The Insusceptibles (several of which I had forgotten, thank you).

But what utterly bewitched me as a young aspiring writer when I first read this piece is that it is a Shakespearean sonnet written in riming couplets.

Almost all the lines are enjambs, but there is a constantly varying weight of enjamb throughout. And the structure of the sonnet is enforced not by rime, but by the different levels of enjambment.

When I first met this poem (1970's, I don't remember which end) British poetry was dominated by formal writers (The Movement was in the ascendancy), but there were no formal pioneers, nobody taking formal writing to new places.

Most of what I was reading at the time was off-the-wall (my favourite collection at the time was probably Spike Hawkins' The Lost Firebrigade).

But you can make stuff fresh without breaking things; as this poem shows.
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