Poems: Selected and New, 1950-1974

by Adrienne Rich

Bound in the publisher's original black cloth covered boards, spine stamped in gilt. Price clipped dust jacket is worn, particularly at the head and heel, and with a closed tear to one corner.

Genres: Poetry

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

Works, 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).

Reviews

[Clara Gauthier · Rating 5 out of 5]

kept coming back to this book over months and finally finished it, a great collection of rich’s works from these 15 years. made me cry in the laundromat

[Craig Werner · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is essentially a review of the "Poems 1973-74" section in Rich's Collected Poems, which I've been working my way through. Poems: Selected and New was actually the first volume of Rich's I read after encountering some of the individual poems early in my graduate school career when I took pioneering American women's poetry scholar Emily Watts' seminar on form and meaning in American poetry. Read in that context, the 73-74 selection was simply part of a life-changing discovery, an absolutely crucial reading encounter that changed my sense of myself, of gender, of American literature, and of the responsibility of the intellectual/cultural life.

I've revisited many of the poems over the years, but never as a distinct whole. Reading them now, the 13 poems, capped by the amazing sequence "From an Old House in America" very clearly stand as a major statement on their own. "Dien Bien Phu," "Essential Resources," "The Wave," "Re-forming the Crystal": numerous poems stand with Rich's best of the incredible decade rung in by Leaflets and culminating in The Dream of a Common Language (which I'll be re-reading next). Rich recognizes that there's an energy unleashed by her process that has enormous, but not clearly defined, potential: "this desire was mine, this energy my energy; it could be used a hundred ways, and going to meet you could be one of them." As the line intimates, the energy's sexual, but it's a kind of sensuality that can't be separated from "the cratered night of female memory, where delicately and with intense care the chieftains inscribe upon the ribs of the volcano the name of the one she has chosen."

These poems confront the problem of voice directly: "I do not wish to simplify/ Or: I would simplify/ by naming the complexity/ It was made over-simple all along."

[hjh · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Gauche as we are, it seems/ we have to play our part” (98)


“I wanted to choose words that even you/ would have to be changed by” (110)

“Once somewhere else/ i Shan’t talk of you/ as a singular event/ or a beautiful thing I saw/ though both are true.” (132)

“that these repetitions are beating their way/ toward a place where we can no longer be together…(I am afraid.)/ it’s not the worst way to live.” (141)

[Tia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fired up by her political poems, and dazzled by the nature ones. Rich is still so underestimated for her surprising use of language and her depth of research/references. Looking forward to revisiting so many favourites, including:

Implosions

On Edges

Leaflets

Boundary

Holiday

The Springboard

[Magali · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another very good collection of Rich's poems. I loved a lot of those.

[Matt Miles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Throughout the process of her poetry becoming more political, Adrienne Rich continues to throw in surprising imagery and word choices that make for rewarding reading.

[Ash Sandstrom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great poetry. I definitely prefer her later works but really enjoyed seeing her growth and change in style and content.

[Ky Zaldivar · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Adrienne Rich. I simply love them. And every word they have ever written.

[Mads · Rating 4 out of 5]

I rarely read poetry books. Usually with poetry books I read the first poem and my tendency is either to go on or stop based on the first poem. With this compilation, Rich began with "Storm Warnings" which ends with the lines:

I draw the curtains as the sky goes black
And set a match to candles, sheathed in glass
Against he keyhole draught, the insistent whine
Of weather through the unsealed aperture.
This is our sole defense against the season;
These are the things that we have learned to to
Who live in troubled regions.

I was hooked!

[Martin Bihl · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a tremendous poet is Ms. Rich, and what a fine collection of her work this is. With selections from her earliest work through her National Book Award-winning 1974 volume "Diving into the Wreck", these poems demonstrate again and again W. S. Merwin's contention that "All her life she has been in love with the hope of telling utter truth, and her command of language from the first has been startlingly powerful."

A fine introduction to this great poet who has not only chronicled our times but has somehow communicated what it actually feels like to be alive during them.

[Talia · Rating 4 out of 5]

ok, i didn't actually read this in its entirety, because it's really f***ing long and i'm reading 3 other books... BUT what i did read, i loved! as usual, Rich amazes and enchants me with her poetry.

[SmarterLilac · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was the book that showed me that not everything Rich has ever written is out-and-out brilliant. That was something of a relief.

[Mardi Stewart · Rating 4 out of 5]

Browsing this book from one of America's finest poets