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Twenty-One Love Poems.
Vint-i-un poemes d'amor -en realitat, vint-i-dos-, en edició bilingüe, és la segona traducció a la nostra llengua d'un llibre d'Adrienne Rich que inclou una introducció molt completa a la persona i l'obra de l'autora, i dos assaigs, inèdits així mateix en català, que complementen tant els poemes com l'ideari i l'activisme lèsbics d'una escriptora imprescindible. Malgrat els més de quaranta anys transcorreguts des de la publicació en anglés del recull i del primer dels dos assaigs, l'obra en conjunt interessa, i força. I no només per la indubtable qualitat literària dels poemes i de llur traducció, sinó també per les seues aportacions a un vertader debat sobre la (in)visibilitat d'expressions i sexualitats no-normatives en la nostra societat i en l'acadèmia. Justificar més la urgència d'aquesta publicació, així com la necessitat de continuar traduint Adrienne Rich, és, tal com diu Sant-Celoni en la introducció, «gratuït i resumible en dues perquè cal».
22 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1976
9 people are currently reading
739 people want to read
About the author
Adrienne Rich
139 books1,576 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 - 30 of 52 reviews
December 26, 2015
the more I live the more I think
two people together is a miracle.
two people together is a miracle.
June 16, 2023
"nikt nas sobie nie wyobraził"
May 21, 2024
lesbijki zawsze wygrywaja
May 21, 2025
Wiersz II to chyba mój ulubiony ❤️
March 11, 2020
This could've been five stars except, if I'm being honest, some of these went totally over my head which made me sad because that's my own fault. But also the fact that Adrienne Rich thinks in ways I could never is an absolutely wonderful thing because these poems were so good??? Like??? How??:
"XI
Every peak is a crater. This is the law of volcanoes,
making them eternally and visibly female.
No height without depth, without a burning core,
Though our straw soles shred on the hardened lava."
Perfect. Wonderful.
"XI
Every peak is a crater. This is the law of volcanoes,
making them eternally and visibly female.
No height without depth, without a burning core,
Though our straw soles shred on the hardened lava."
Perfect. Wonderful.
February 26, 2024
“Well, that's finished. The woman who cherished
her suffering is dead. I am her descendant.
I love the scar-tissue she handed on to me,
but I want to go on from here with you
fighting the temptation to make a career of pain.”
her suffering is dead. I am her descendant.
I love the scar-tissue she handed on to me,
but I want to go on from here with you
fighting the temptation to make a career of pain.”
December 19, 2024
los mejores poemas sáficos que he leído 💗🧡
November 11, 2017
''Your silence today is a pond where drowned things live
I want to see raised dripping and brought into the sun.
It’s not my own face I see there, but other faces,
even your face at another age.
Whatever’s lost there is needed by both of us—
a watch of old gold, a water-blurred fever chart,
a key. . . . Even the silt and pebbles of the bottom
deserve their glint of recognition. I fear this silence,
this inarticulate life. I'm waiting
for a wind that will gently open this sheeted water
for once, and show me what I can do
for you, who have often made the unnameable
nameable for others, even for me.''
I want to see raised dripping and brought into the sun.
It’s not my own face I see there, but other faces,
even your face at another age.
Whatever’s lost there is needed by both of us—
a watch of old gold, a water-blurred fever chart,
a key. . . . Even the silt and pebbles of the bottom
deserve their glint of recognition. I fear this silence,
this inarticulate life. I'm waiting
for a wind that will gently open this sheeted water
for once, and show me what I can do
for you, who have often made the unnameable
nameable for others, even for me.''
January 15, 2022
4.5; very cute, very gay. 2 & The Floating Poem are my favs
August 6, 2023
absolutely brilliant
so many outstanding lines, including:
“At twenty, yes: we thought we’d live forever. / At forty-five, I want to know even our limits.”
“And my incurable anger, my unmendable wounds / break open further with tears, / I am crying helplessly, / and they still control the world, and you are not in my arms.”
“this still unexcavated hole, this act of translation, this half-world”
“I try to create you in words, / am I simply using you, like a river or a war?”
“that without tenderness, we are in hell.”
“whatever we do together is pure invention”
“Whatever happens with us, your body / will haunt / mine”
“Merely a notion that the tape-recorder / should have caught some ghost of us”
“the more I live the more I think / two people together is a miracle.”
“The story of our lives becomes our lives.”
so many outstanding lines, including:
“At twenty, yes: we thought we’d live forever. / At forty-five, I want to know even our limits.”
“And my incurable anger, my unmendable wounds / break open further with tears, / I am crying helplessly, / and they still control the world, and you are not in my arms.”
“this still unexcavated hole, this act of translation, this half-world”
“I try to create you in words, / am I simply using you, like a river or a war?”
“that without tenderness, we are in hell.”
“whatever we do together is pure invention”
“Whatever happens with us, your body / will haunt / mine”
“Merely a notion that the tape-recorder / should have caught some ghost of us”
“the more I live the more I think / two people together is a miracle.”
“The story of our lives becomes our lives.”
March 11, 2020
Genialne. Tyle.
September 27, 2021
timelessly achingly brilliant.
November 29, 2024
la poesía safica que merecemos
December 2, 2024
When I am in an horny loneliness competition but my opponent is also a lesbian.
October 5, 2023
***READING CHALLENGE 2023 - SEP - COLLECTION/BOOK OF POEMS***
Imagery - exquisite - trace definite progression and change of mood, atmosphere, rhythm.
Even portraying conflict, Rich is calm and collected, and there's a nice flow still.
Sex-scene poetry is giving cringe, though.
Gems:
Number 17 - "No one’s fated or doomed to love anyone."
Number 18 - "Rain on the West Side Highway,
red light at Riverside:
the more I live the more I think
two people together is a miracle."
"Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies." - Aristotle (I am referring to straight love here.)
Imagery - exquisite - trace definite progression and change of mood, atmosphere, rhythm.
Even portraying conflict, Rich is calm and collected, and there's a nice flow still.
Sex-scene poetry is giving cringe, though.
Gems:
Number 17 - "No one’s fated or doomed to love anyone."
Number 18 - "Rain on the West Side Highway,
red light at Riverside:
the more I live the more I think
two people together is a miracle."
"Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies." - Aristotle (I am referring to straight love here.)
September 2, 2025
"lying on that beach we could not stay
because the wind drove fine sand against us
as if it were against us
if we tried to withstand it and we failed—
[...] was the failure ours?"
I read this collection of poems for a presentation for uni and.. wow. These poems are so incredibly beautiful. So painful, but so joyful, capturing the essence of queer existence and survival in the 1970s.
The excerpt I wrote here is from the poem XV, and I believe it summarises perfectly the message of this collection by Adrienne Rich: trying to simply exist as a queer person in this world is feeling as if the world is against us, and maybe wondering at some point in life if it is our fault, if we are wrong.
I was disappointed, however, to find out Adrienne Rich was transphobic, which is the only reason why I am not giving this a 5 star review.
because the wind drove fine sand against us
as if it were against us
if we tried to withstand it and we failed—
[...] was the failure ours?"
I read this collection of poems for a presentation for uni and.. wow. These poems are so incredibly beautiful. So painful, but so joyful, capturing the essence of queer existence and survival in the 1970s.
The excerpt I wrote here is from the poem XV, and I believe it summarises perfectly the message of this collection by Adrienne Rich: trying to simply exist as a queer person in this world is feeling as if the world is against us, and maybe wondering at some point in life if it is our fault, if we are wrong.
I was disappointed, however, to find out Adrienne Rich was transphobic, which is the only reason why I am not giving this a 5 star review.
February 17, 2015
Para mí no pasa de las 3'5 estrellas. Como propuesta de reescritura de los poemas nerudianos, no está mal, pero la concreción práctica no me convence tanto...tal vez demasiados tópicos y una forma muy forzada por los temas.
August 27, 2019
A captivating set of poems written over two years in the 1970s. About queer love, love between women, and the lack of freedom to love. I took a break from a book of poetry that cites one of these to read the whole thing.
April 26, 2012
Honest, erotic, and often simultaneously beautiful and painful poetry. I loved so many of these! Particularly X, XII, and XIX.
June 17, 2012
Breath Taking...
March 1, 2018
True sonnets, from the heart. Poetic brilliance.
November 18, 2018
Taught me about the sharp edges and comforts of silence
Read
November 30, 2021wlw poetry we deserve
"Your small hands, precisely equal to my own—
only the thumb is larger, longer—in these hands
I could trust the world, or in many hands like these,
handling power-tools or steering-wheel
or touching a human face. . . . Such hands could turn
the unborn child rightways in the birth canal
or pilot the exploratory rescue-ship
through icebergs, or piece together
the fine, needle-like sherds of a great krater-cup
bearing on its sides
figures of ecstatic women striding
to the sibyl’s den or the Eleusinian cave—
such hands might carry out an unavoidable violence
with such restraint, with such a grasp
of the range and limits of violence
that violence ever after would be obsolete."
"Your small hands, precisely equal to my own—
only the thumb is larger, longer—in these hands
I could trust the world, or in many hands like these,
handling power-tools or steering-wheel
or touching a human face. . . . Such hands could turn
the unborn child rightways in the birth canal
or pilot the exploratory rescue-ship
through icebergs, or piece together
the fine, needle-like sherds of a great krater-cup
bearing on its sides
figures of ecstatic women striding
to the sibyl’s den or the Eleusinian cave—
such hands might carry out an unavoidable violence
with such restraint, with such a grasp
of the range and limits of violence
that violence ever after would be obsolete."
January 13, 2024
Heartbreaking poems on what seems like the inevitable cycle of love and loss and how they reinforce each other.
Love this quote I found online from Rich:
“An honourable human relationship—that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word “love”—is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other. It is important to do this because it breaks down human self-delusion and isolation. It is important to do this because in doing so we do justice to our own complexity. It is important to do this because we can count on so few people to go that hard way with us.
Adrienne Rich – On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose
Love this quote I found online from Rich:
“An honourable human relationship—that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word “love”—is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other. It is important to do this because it breaks down human self-delusion and isolation. It is important to do this because in doing so we do justice to our own complexity. It is important to do this because we can count on so few people to go that hard way with us.
Adrienne Rich – On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose
June 5, 2021
What kind of beast would turn its life into words?
What atonement is this all about?
— and yet, writing words like these, I’m also living.
Is all this close to the wolverines’ howled signals,
that modulated cantata of the wild?
or, when away from you I try to create you in words,
am I simply using you, like a river or a war?
And how have I used rivers, how have I used wars
to escape writing of the worst thing of all —
not the crimes of others, not even our own death,
but the failure to want our freedom passionately enough
so that blighted elms, sick rivers, massacres would seem
mere emblems of that desecration of ourselves?
What atonement is this all about?
— and yet, writing words like these, I’m also living.
Is all this close to the wolverines’ howled signals,
that modulated cantata of the wild?
or, when away from you I try to create you in words,
am I simply using you, like a river or a war?
And how have I used rivers, how have I used wars
to escape writing of the worst thing of all —
not the crimes of others, not even our own death,
but the failure to want our freedom passionately enough
so that blighted elms, sick rivers, massacres would seem
mere emblems of that desecration of ourselves?
November 12, 2024
“…and our bodies, so alike, are yet so different
and the past echoing through our bloodstreams
is freighted with different language, different meanings
though in any chronicle of the world we share
it could be written with new meaning
we were two lovers of one gender,
we were two women of one generation.”
Wow, realmente cada poema era mejor que el anterior, es el primer trabajo que leo de Adrienne y ahora solo quiero leer todo lo que ha escrito.
El hecho de que este libro fue para tirarle shade a Neruda solo lo hace mejor… El poema flotante es una locura “Whatever happens with us, your body will haunt mine”
and the past echoing through our bloodstreams
is freighted with different language, different meanings
though in any chronicle of the world we share
it could be written with new meaning
we were two lovers of one gender,
we were two women of one generation.”
Wow, realmente cada poema era mejor que el anterior, es el primer trabajo que leo de Adrienne y ahora solo quiero leer todo lo que ha escrito.
El hecho de que este libro fue para tirarle shade a Neruda solo lo hace mejor… El poema flotante es una locura “Whatever happens with us, your body will haunt mine”
August 25, 2022
Piękne wiersze o queerowej lesbijskiej miłości. Miłości dojrzałej, miłości odważnej, miłości przecierającej szlak innym kobietom. Tematy poruszane w wierszach to na przykład brak tradycji i tym samym trudność w budowaniu relacji. Podmiotka liryczna często chciałaby się móc na czymś oprzeć, odwołać się do jakiegoś wspólnego doświadczenia, ale takiego nie ma. Przypomina mi się trochę koncepcja „braku archiwów” z „Domu snów” Carmen Marii Machado. W tych wierszach jest też miasto i przestrzeń, gdzie wszystko jest polityczne, nacechowane społecznie, także uczucie pojawiające się w wierszach.
January 7, 2023
IV
You know, I think men love wars...
And my incurable anger, my unmendable wounds
break open further with tears, I am crying helplessly,
and they still control the world, and you are not in my arms.
XI
Every peak is a crater. This is the law of volcanoes,
making them eternally and visibly female.
No height without depth, without a burning core,
though our straw soles shred on the hardened lava.
XV
If I cling to circumstances I could feel
not responsible. Only she who says
she did not choose, is the loser in the end.
You know, I think men love wars...
And my incurable anger, my unmendable wounds
break open further with tears, I am crying helplessly,
and they still control the world, and you are not in my arms.
XI
Every peak is a crater. This is the law of volcanoes,
making them eternally and visibly female.
No height without depth, without a burning core,
though our straw soles shred on the hardened lava.
XV
If I cling to circumstances I could feel
not responsible. Only she who says
she did not choose, is the loser in the end.
February 22, 2021
Intimate. Beautiful. Raw.
So many beautiful lines I wish I could tattoo inside my eyelids so I could read them over and over and over.
So many beautiful lines I wish I could tattoo on my forehead so everyone I meet would get to read them too.
So many beautiful lines I wish I could tattoo inside my eyelids so I could read them over and over and over.
So many beautiful lines I wish I could tattoo on my forehead so everyone I meet would get to read them too.
August 29, 2021
uwu .... UWUUUUUUU
Displaying 1 - 30 of 52 reviews