The life of the feminist poet and essayist Adrienne Rich (1929-2012) began as heteronormative, like that of most women of her time. She married Alfred Haskell Conrad, a professor of economics at Harvard, at the age of 24, with the aim of escaping from her family and taking a first step towards her independence, as Rich later acknowledged. However, as her thinking evolved, her life was transformed, in what was a very difficult exercise in coherence that took her years to adjust. As one of her poems says: “When my times showed signs / of becoming / politically correct (…) / I began to ask myself questions” (from American weather). In We are born of womanrevisits the theme of motherhood, identifying the role of the mother stipulated by men as the origin of inequality between men and women. The thinker had her tubes tied after her third child and is said to have advised Sylvia Plath not to become a mother, according to her biographer, Hilary Holladay, via email (The Power of Adrienne RichNan A. Talese, 2020). Shortly after Rich separated from her husband, he committed suicide.
It was not until 1976, at the age of 47, that the thinker made public her relationship with the then emerging writer Michelle Cliff, 17 years her junior, with whom she lived until her death. Both were committed activists and met through the same circles. That year Rich published Twenty-one love poemsa collection of poems that made her an icon of lesbianism. For Rich, heterosexuality has been a social imposition for women. In her essay Compulsory heterosexuality and lesbian existence criticizes the system based on values linked to male supremacy.
According to Holladay, “her eloquence and clarity helped make her the face of literary feminism in the late twentieth century. She always insisted that women have the right to make their own choices.”
Ideas that inspire, challenge and change, don’t miss anything
KEEP READING
Art as a catalyst for freedom and self-identity
Rich considered poetry a human right and used it as a political tool. For the American writer, creativity and art offered the opportunity to discover a language of her own with which to identify and escape external, often oppressive, standards. The rupture of her ideas was deeply liberating for women, who saw the complexity of their desires and thoughts legitimized. Many not only stopped feeling guilty or inferior, but were empowered. Rich managed to make society evolve through a change in the narrative about how women told their own story, urging them to free themselves from manipulation and submission to take control of their lives. Her work exemplifies her own vital evolution to the point of becoming aware and remains essential in some of the most prestigious universities in the world.
Nancy K. Miller, a feminist writer and distinguished professor of Comparative Literature at CUNY (The City University of New York), notes by email that in the course on 20th- and 21st-century women writers and intellectuals she teaches, “Rich remains an important and exciting figure.” And Caroline Light, a professor and director of undergraduate studies at Harvard University, also says by email that during the 15 years she has taught Dreams of a common language —the only required course in the Women, Gender and Sexuality curriculum (and whose title is inspired by a poem by Rich)—, began class with the poem Cartographies of silenceIn it, the poet urges us not to confuse “silence” with “absence.” According to Light, “the silences we witness reveal deep inequalities and power structures.”
The denunciation of the hypocrisy of power
Rich’s career was brilliant, full of awards and recognition. After graduating from Radcliffe College, the female counterpart of Harvard (which only allowed access to men), she obtained a Guggenheim scholarship to study at Oxford. With her first collection of poems she won the Younger Poets Prize at Yale, WH Auden signed the preface and her influence was unstoppable since then, obtaining great recognition even posthumously (she was a finalist for the Pulitzer in 2017).
Rich advocated for an art that would help change the status quo and appealed to both beauty and justice. That is why she used her power to reject two of the most prestigious prizes in the intellectual field, giving visibility to social injustices that continued to be ignored.
The poet refused national awards out of principle and autonomy. “I didn’t want to be coerced,” explains her biographer Hilary Holladay.
50 years ago, in 1974, he was awarded the National Book Award in the poetry category for Diving Into the Wreck (Dive into the Shipwreck), in which she delves into the history of women: “Words are maps. / I came to assess the damage that was done / and the treasures that remain.” It is considered her masterpiece and, according to her biographer, “it is one of the most empowering and beautifully written books in modern American literature.” For Rich, this award was a patriarchal hoax that only valued women within the norms of a system created by men, thus perpetuating gender inequality, but she knew that it would give her visibility to claim the feminist struggle and she decided to use it as a platform. She agreed with two other nominated poets, Audre Lorde and Alice Walker, that if one of them won, they would collect the award together, on behalf of all women. Upon winning the award, Rich read a text signed by the three in which she renounced the monetary prize. “None of us could leave unquestioned the terms on which poets are granted or denied honour and livelihood in this world, especially when it comes to women. We dedicate this occasion to the struggle for self-determination of all women, of all colours, identities and classes,” she said.
In 1997, he turned down another of the most prestigious awards: the National Medal of Arts, awarded by then-US President Bill Clinton. Rich did so in protest against a system of government that he considered hypocritical and that had intensified inequalities to the detriment of marginalized groups. “A president cannot meaningfully honor certain symbolically chosen artists while the people, for the most part, are so disgraced.” […] “My concern for my country is inseparable from my concerns as an artist,” the poet said in the diatribe in which she rejected the award. It is included in her essay Why I turned down the National Medal of Artsnow an emblem of political dissidence. “I know that art means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of the power that holds it hostage,” she said. According to Holladay, Rich is an example to follow because she did not reject national awards only out of principle, “but also out of autonomy.” “She did not want to be coerced,” explains the author’s biographer.
Adrienne Rich died at the age of 82, leaving behind an extensive legacy of more than 30 publications (mostly poetry, but also essays) and being considered one of the most influential feminist writers in history. Her thinking is still relevant, along with the problems she denounced half a century ago: to be free, it is necessary to think by imagining. The reality we live in is restricted by the rules of the patriarchal system and is not the only possible one.
Sign up here to the weekly Ideas newsletter.
#Adrienne #Rich #woman #turned #verses #vanguard #feminism