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Later Poems Selected and New: 1971-2012 by Rich, Adrienne (2012) Hardcover
The final volume of poems assembled by America’s most powerful and distinctive voice.Adrienne Rich's Later Selected and New, 1971 - 2012 displays the strong trajectory of the work of one of the most distinguished artists of American letters. After her death in March 2012, Rich left behind a manuscript of mature work that speaks for her concern with a poetics of relation along with a passionate attention to craft.In addition to her selections from twelve volumes of published work, Later Selected and New contains ten powerful new poems. Among these, From Strata is a kind of archaeology of the present day; Itinerary searches for an indefinite future in a menaced landscape; For the Young Anarchists offers a trope of skilled labor for political action; and the haunting voice of the Teethsucking Bird reminds us of what we have been told to forget.These and other poems look back into history and forward into the future while engaging with contemporary moments. Rich s singular command of language continues to the end.
Unknown Binding
First published November 5, 2012
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About the author
Adrienne Rich
138 books1,569 followersWorks, notably
Diving into the Wreck
(1973), of American poet and essayist Adrienne Rich champion such causes as pacifism, feminism, and civil rights for gays and lesbians.
A mother bore Adrienne Cecile Rich, a feminist, to a middle-class family with parents, who educated her until she entered public school in the fourth grade. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Radcliffe college in 1951, the same year of her first book of poems, A Change of World. That volume, chosen by W. H. Auden for the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award, and her next, The Diamond Cutters and Other Poems (1955), earned her a reputation as an elegant, controlled stylist.
In the 1960s, however, Rich began a dramatic shift away from her earlier mode as she took up political and feminist themes and stylistic experimentation in such works as Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law (1963), The Necessities of Life (1966), Leaflets (1969), and The Will to Change (1971). In Diving into the Wreck (1973) and The Dream of a Common Language (1978), she continued to experiment with form and to deal with the experiences and aspirations of women from a feminist perspective.
In addition to her poetry, Rich has published many essays on poetry, feminism, motherhood, and lesbianism. Her recent collections include An Atlas of the Difficult World (1991) and Dark Fields of the Republic: Poems 1991–1995 (1995).
A mother bore Adrienne Cecile Rich, a feminist, to a middle-class family with parents, who educated her until she entered public school in the fourth grade. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Radcliffe college in 1951, the same year of her first book of poems, A Change of World. That volume, chosen by W. H. Auden for the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award, and her next, The Diamond Cutters and Other Poems (1955), earned her a reputation as an elegant, controlled stylist.
In the 1960s, however, Rich began a dramatic shift away from her earlier mode as she took up political and feminist themes and stylistic experimentation in such works as Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law (1963), The Necessities of Life (1966), Leaflets (1969), and The Will to Change (1971). In Diving into the Wreck (1973) and The Dream of a Common Language (1978), she continued to experiment with form and to deal with the experiences and aspirations of women from a feminist perspective.
In addition to her poetry, Rich has published many essays on poetry, feminism, motherhood, and lesbianism. Her recent collections include An Atlas of the Difficult World (1991) and Dark Fields of the Republic: Poems 1991–1995 (1995).
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
January 11, 2013
How to rate this book? From the time I entered college in 1987 till her death in 2012, Adrienne Rich was the most important living poet to me. I've read every book she's ever written, and I was lucky enough to see her read her work at the 92nd Street Y in NYC.
Although I own all of Rich's individual poetry collections, I often grab Collected Early Poems (1950-1970) off my book shelf. It's handy, meticulously edited, and well-made. I am happy to say that Later Poems (1971-2012) is its sister collection in every way.
The new collection starts out with two of the most remarkable and important poetry books in post-World War II American poetry--Diving into the Wreck and The Dream of A Common Language. Rich, who attended Radcliffe and wrote early, conservative poems as an undergraduate that earned her the Yale Series of Younger Poets' Prize, and who married a brilliant Harvard student (who committed suicide after they'd had three sons) started to discover her identity as a radical feminist and lesbian (her partner until her death was the writer Michelle Cliff) at the time this collection begins. She began to take the plunge and carve out a new poetry.
from "Diving into the Wreck"
First having read the books of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body armor of black rubber
and 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.
For the rest of her career, Rich not only "brought discussions of gender, race, and class to the forefront of poetical discourse" but she challenged herself at every turn to tell the truth, in tough/often brutal, loving/yet inconsolable, lyrical/but economical poems.
There are fistfuls of masterpieces in Later Poems. It's hard to pick a few representative lines to quote, in the hope of getting readers to try out this poetry. And that's the goal, really.
from "Twenty-one Love Poems, III"
At twenty, yes: we thought we'd live forever.
At forty-five, I want to know even our limits.
I touch you knowing we weren't born tomorrow,
and somehow, each of us will help the other live,
and somehow, each of us must help the other die.
from "North American Time, V"
Suppose you want to write
of a woman braiding
another woman's hair--
straight down, or with beads and shells
in three-strand plaits or corn-rows--
you had better know this thickness
the length the pattern
why she decides to braid her hair
how it is done to her
what country it happens in
what else happens in that country
You have to know these things.
In a Classroom
Talking of poetry, hauling the books
arm-full to the table where the heads
bend or gaze upward, listening, reading aloud,
talking of consonants, elision,
caught in the how, oblivious of why:
I look in your face, Jude,
neither frowning nor nodding,
opaque in the slant of dust-motes over the table:
a presence like a stone, if a stone were thinking:
"What I cannot say is me. For that I came."
from "An Atlas of the Difficult World"
I don't want to know how he tracked them
along the Appalachian Trail, hid close
by their tent, pitched as they thought in seclusion
killing one woman, the other
dragging herself into town his defense they had teased his
loathing
of what they were I don't want to know
but this is not a bad dream of mine
from "To the Days"
A cat drinks from a bowl of marigolds--his moment.
Surely the love of life is never-ending,
the failure of nerve, a charred fuse.
I want more from you than I ever knew to ask.
It is devastating to me that there will be no more new poems. But Rich left enough to read and ponder on for the rest of my days. I read the last section of Late Poems, her last, uncollected poems, slowly. I didn't want this book to end.
The last lines:
The signature to a life requires
the search for a method
rejection of posturing
trust in the witnesses
a vial of invisible ink
a sheet of paper held steady
after the end-stroke
above a deciphering flame.
Although I own all of Rich's individual poetry collections, I often grab Collected Early Poems (1950-1970) off my book shelf. It's handy, meticulously edited, and well-made. I am happy to say that Later Poems (1971-2012) is its sister collection in every way.
The new collection starts out with two of the most remarkable and important poetry books in post-World War II American poetry--Diving into the Wreck and The Dream of A Common Language. Rich, who attended Radcliffe and wrote early, conservative poems as an undergraduate that earned her the Yale Series of Younger Poets' Prize, and who married a brilliant Harvard student (who committed suicide after they'd had three sons) started to discover her identity as a radical feminist and lesbian (her partner until her death was the writer Michelle Cliff) at the time this collection begins. She began to take the plunge and carve out a new poetry.
from "Diving into the Wreck"
First having read the books of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body armor of black rubber
and 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.
For the rest of her career, Rich not only "brought discussions of gender, race, and class to the forefront of poetical discourse" but she challenged herself at every turn to tell the truth, in tough/often brutal, loving/yet inconsolable, lyrical/but economical poems.
There are fistfuls of masterpieces in Later Poems. It's hard to pick a few representative lines to quote, in the hope of getting readers to try out this poetry. And that's the goal, really.
from "Twenty-one Love Poems, III"
At twenty, yes: we thought we'd live forever.
At forty-five, I want to know even our limits.
I touch you knowing we weren't born tomorrow,
and somehow, each of us will help the other live,
and somehow, each of us must help the other die.
from "North American Time, V"
Suppose you want to write
of a woman braiding
another woman's hair--
straight down, or with beads and shells
in three-strand plaits or corn-rows--
you had better know this thickness
the length the pattern
why she decides to braid her hair
how it is done to her
what country it happens in
what else happens in that country
You have to know these things.
In a Classroom
Talking of poetry, hauling the books
arm-full to the table where the heads
bend or gaze upward, listening, reading aloud,
talking of consonants, elision,
caught in the how, oblivious of why:
I look in your face, Jude,
neither frowning nor nodding,
opaque in the slant of dust-motes over the table:
a presence like a stone, if a stone were thinking:
"What I cannot say is me. For that I came."
from "An Atlas of the Difficult World"
I don't want to know how he tracked them
along the Appalachian Trail, hid close
by their tent, pitched as they thought in seclusion
killing one woman, the other
dragging herself into town his defense they had teased his
loathing
of what they were I don't want to know
but this is not a bad dream of mine
from "To the Days"
A cat drinks from a bowl of marigolds--his moment.
Surely the love of life is never-ending,
the failure of nerve, a charred fuse.
I want more from you than I ever knew to ask.
It is devastating to me that there will be no more new poems. But Rich left enough to read and ponder on for the rest of my days. I read the last section of Late Poems, her last, uncollected poems, slowly. I didn't want this book to end.
The last lines:
The signature to a life requires
the search for a method
rejection of posturing
trust in the witnesses
a vial of invisible ink
a sheet of paper held steady
after the end-stroke
above a deciphering flame.
July 16, 2020
4.5 stars. 500 pages of socially-engaged, often breathtaking poetic brilliance. This book was worth savoring slowly.
"The light of outrage is the light of history / springing upon us when we're least prepared, / thinking maybe a little glade of time / leaf-thick and with clear water / is ours, is promised us, for all we've hacked / and tracked our way through: to this: / What will it be? Your wish or mine? your / prayers or my wish then: that those we love / be well, whatever that means, to be well. / Outrage: who dare claim protection for their own / amid such unprotection? What kind of prayer / is that? To what kind of god? What kind of wish?" -"Through Corralitos Under Rolls of Cloud," IV, pg. 239
"The light of outrage is the light of history / springing upon us when we're least prepared, / thinking maybe a little glade of time / leaf-thick and with clear water / is ours, is promised us, for all we've hacked / and tracked our way through: to this: / What will it be? Your wish or mine? your / prayers or my wish then: that those we love / be well, whatever that means, to be well. / Outrage: who dare claim protection for their own / amid such unprotection? What kind of prayer / is that? To what kind of god? What kind of wish?" -"Through Corralitos Under Rolls of Cloud," IV, pg. 239
December 30, 2017
I read the whole book wondering why it took me so long to read her. Amazing--no surprise, she is a legend, and deservedly so.
I would love to read her take on 2017.
I would love to read her take on 2017.
May 2, 2019
This will be my last Adrienne Rich read for the moment and I'm going to miss reading her words each day. That was a perfect ending to a dive into Rich's world.
February 7, 2017
"What Kind of Times Are These"
There’s a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill
and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows
near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted
who disappeared into those shadows.
I’ve walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don’t be fooled,
this isn’t a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,
our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,
its own ways of making people disappear.
I won’t tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods
meeting the unmasked strip of light—
ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:
I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.
And I won’t tell you where it is, so why do I tell you
anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these
to have you listen at all, it’s necessary
to talk about trees.
When I was a sophomore, a beloved English professor first introduced me to Adrienne Rich, and reading her was like walking through an open door of (womanly, poetic) possibility. I did not know women poets could and did write like this. We had to memorize poems and recite them in front of the class, and I chose “Planetarium”: I have been standing all my life in the/direct path of a battery of signals… I still feel a little thrill whenever I encounter Adrienne Rich, and reading these, her last poems, was a pleasure. She is a poet for these dark days.
Last stanza of "Dreams Before Waking"
What would it mean to live
in a city whose people were changing
each other’s despair into hope?—
You yourself must change it.—
what would it feel like to know
your country was changing?—
You yourself must change it.—
Though your life felt arduous
new and unmapped and strange
what would it mean to stand on the first
page of the end of despair?
July 24, 2017
I'll begin by noting that Adrienne Rich is one of the literary lights of our age; for decades, she conveyed both the personal and the political dimensions of what it means to live in our time as well as anyone. I'll also note that these poetry anthologies, which gather a lifetime of work and tend to find their way into library shelves, can be overwhelming at times. But this is a good primer for further exploration. I personally prefer Rich's mid-late period, from the 1980's and early 90's: "Time's Power," "Dark Fields of the Republic," "A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far," etc. Part of this might be my own familiarity with those times. But I also think it is when Rich really honed in on the beauty and the limitations of our lives, of the point where our idealism and enthusiasms are leavened by a realization of the limits of our own mortality.
December 25, 2016
I really enjoyed the first 250 pages or so of this collection on a conceptual and aesthetic level, but reading through the second half was almost painful for me--I dragged myself through most of it.
February 6, 2024
Ms Rich's words sit in your brain, and seep into your heart. Her frustrations are palpable, her passions, empowering. I thoroughly enjoyed her essays (which I'm glad I read first), but I loved her poetry, amd can't wait to feel the longing to return to them again. It is an indictment of the system that I, being a fan of poetry, made it past the age of 30 without having read Adrienne Rich before.
May 17, 2020
It was a pleasure spending each morning reading one or two (or three) of your poems over the past year. Thank you Adrienne. We miss you.
June 28, 2021
Her later work was more relatable and complex- which for me made it more enjoyable.
January 1, 2013
[Actually finished the last 7% or so on 1 January 2013 but claiming I did on Dec 31st for easier bookkeeping elsewhere.]
It was alright. But BIG. I liked more from the first half of the book--and a big thank you to the editor for putting it in chronological order--seeing as my last note was made from page 252.
I rarely knew what she was on about although I could get glimpses in places. In actuality, this book has convinced me that I need to step away from poetry, for a while anyway. It is nothing about this book or Adrienne Rich, in particular, but more the straw that broke the camel's back. For all the reading of poetry I have been doing for a couple of years, and including the couple classes I took at Briar Cliff, I still have no idea what is supposed to make a poem 'good' or otherwise. All I have to go on is whether I like something or whether it resonates with me in some more profound way. And there HAS to be something more than that.
It was alright. But BIG. I liked more from the first half of the book--and a big thank you to the editor for putting it in chronological order--seeing as my last note was made from page 252.
I rarely knew what she was on about although I could get glimpses in places. In actuality, this book has convinced me that I need to step away from poetry, for a while anyway. It is nothing about this book or Adrienne Rich, in particular, but more the straw that broke the camel's back. For all the reading of poetry I have been doing for a couple of years, and including the couple classes I took at Briar Cliff, I still have no idea what is supposed to make a poem 'good' or otherwise. All I have to go on is whether I like something or whether it resonates with me in some more profound way. And there HAS to be something more than that.
February 3, 2013
I am enjoying this book, which is a gift from my daughter and therefore special because of that. Also, because I have loved Rich's poetry in the past as well as her outstanding "Of Woman Born." I think I have become lazy over the years because I find myself working harder than I want to work while reading new poems I don't already know. But I enjoy reading the familiar ones, and with more reading may revise this rating up.
December 22, 2015
There are some poems written by Adrienne that have made a lasting impact, but those poems are not in this collection. All I see in this collection is a lost woman who cares about politics and social injustice. But I don't see her heart...and that removes the power that could be in this collection.
March 28, 2013
Rob Spillman (Editor of Tin House): From Diving Into the Wreck to her very last poems, written when she was eighty-two, Rich’s poems burn with precision and passion.
August 27, 2016
every single poem in this collection blew me away. highly recommend.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews