Adrienne Rich, Adrienne Rich's Poetry

Eleanor Jane Hedley (Bryn Mawr College)

Ed. by Nick Selby, University of East Anglia
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1951 - 2007

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Poetry (any)

Resources

A Change of World, Rich’s debut volume, was awarded the Yale Younger Poets prize in 1951, the year she graduated from Radcliffe College. In the Foreword to her Collected Early Poems, Rich explains that at the age of 21 she “implicitly dissociated poetry from politics” and was far from desiring to change the world: “‘Change’ [in these poems] means unpredictability, unrest, menace—not something ‘we’ might desire and even help bring to pass” (CEP, 1993, xx). The speaker of “Storm Warnings”, the leadoff poem in the volume, is bracing for inclement weather but her “sole defense against the season” is to draw the curtains, close the shutters, and ride out the storm (CW, 1951, 13; CEP</…

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3167 words

Citation: Hedley, Eleanor Jane. "Adrienne Rich's Poetry". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 22 February 2011 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=32159, accessed 20 April 2024.]

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