Selected Poems: 1950-2012

by Adrienne Rich, Albert Gelpi (Editor), Barbara Charlesworth Gelpi (Editor)

Sixty years of poems from pioneering writer, activist, and intellectual Adrienne Rich―“the Blake of American letters” (Nadine Gordimer). Adrienne Rich was the singular voice of her generation, bringing discussions of gender, race, and class to the forefront of poetical discourse. This generous selection from all nineteen of Rich’s published poetry volumes encompasses her best-known work―the clear-sighted and passionate feminist poems of the 1970s, including “Diving into the Wreck,” “Planetarium,” and “The Phenomenology of Anger”―and offers the full range of her evolution as a poet. From poems leading up to her feminist breakthrough through bold later work such as “North American Time” and “Calle Visión,” Selected Poems celebrates Rich’s prophetic vision as well as the inventiveness that shaped her enduring art.

Genres: Poetry, LGBT, Queer, Feminism, School

421 pages, Paperback

First published September 11, 2018

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

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wasn't sure how I would handle just 400 pages of very full poetry, but wowow. There is no way I possibly parsed these poems to their utmost, but I still cried plenty !!!!

[Renée · Rating 5 out of 5]

good! was really craving poetry a month ago and just had to read this book my favorite is still atlas of a difficult world xiii (dedications), but i also really liked sources vii, the last section of living memory, hubble photographs: after sappho and many more!!! greatly enjoyed reading a collection w poems from such a wide span of her life

[Klaudia]

Adrienne Rich’s poetry is next level. It soars.

It took me some time to read this collection only because it was so good. I constantly needed to bookmark sections, write notes, copy lines, and savor the brilliance.

Find your next favorite poem. Read Adrienne Rich.

[lena · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5 ⭐

Una colección muy completa y muy cuidada. Dedica la atención necesaria a todas las vertientes de la obra de Adrienne Rich y, además, la introducción es estupenda como guía para un primer acercamiento. Edición chula para leer a una autora aún más chula.

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book took me a while because I wanted to be intentional with reading it. I have found poems in here (marked in my own copy) that have changed my perspective on solitude, security, and love. Since getting into poetry last year, I have tried to find poems that make me feel what Rich’s have. Love love love

[Joy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful! Adrienne Rich should be that IT girl in poetry, she was so ahead of her time and so thoughtful, progressive and intelligent. I loved this collection so much, I read it over the span of 12 months in small bursts to savour it and I loved it. Highly recommend

[GretchenPhrase · Rating 3 out of 5]

The meaning that searches for its word like a hermit crab.
A monologue that waits for the listener.
An ear filled with one sound only.
A shell penetrated by meaning.

[renee · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.25* imperfect but wholly human. not a 5 star because it didn’t alter my life. at certain stages held very incorrect political perspectives but she went on to correct them and it is fascinating to read the growth of her consciousness and realisation of the horrors of zionism.

[Zach · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rich wrote some awesome poems. She also wrote some not-so-good ones. I loved her early era--her poems were cool and creative and crisp. Her middle era, the so-called "feminist" era, I did not like (although I did like the famous poems "Planetarium" and "Diving Into the Wreck") because I found that the feminism in her writing was mostly just over-the-top hatred of men, which unsuitably meets a problem--the glaring need for greater equality and respect for women in human society--with a related problem, that is, the generalization of an entire sex. In my opinion, however, Rich regained her sense as the years went on, for she ended strong with her more political, poignant poems.

[Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve been reading this book of poems since October. This is the first collection where I’ve jumped around, randomly picking a poem to read every few days. There’s something about Adrienne Rich’s work and the way she plays with words that delights my soul. Absolute magic.

[Christine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can only imagine how many poems Adrienne Rich wrote over the course of her lifetime if this 400 page book just holds a selection. The best part is being able to see how Rich's writing style evolves over decades of mastering her creative craft. I will say all of my favourite poems are in the middle of her writing career. The later poems are much more complex. Rich starts experimenting with spacing and punctuation and italics to add nuance to her works, which I think will appeal to readers who like poems that take multiple readings before they give up their secrets, while the earlier poems will probably be more enjoyable for readers who don't have a lot of experience reading poetry, or maybe just want something a little more straightforward. Two readings max, sort of deal. This is the kind of poetry collection that will give you something new every time you read it.

[Karen-Leigh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sixty years of poems from pioneering writer, activist, and intellectual Adrienne Rich―“the Blake of American letters” (Nadine Gordimer). Adrienne Rich was the singular voice of her generation, bringing discussions of gender, race, and class to the forefront of poetical discourse. This generous selection from all nineteen of Rich’s published poetry volumes encompasses her best-known work―the clear-sighted and passionate feminist poems of the 1970s, including “Diving into the Wreck,” “Planetarium,” and “The Phenomenology of Anger”―and offers the full range of her evolution as a poet. From poems leading up to her feminist breakthrough through bold later work such as “North American Time” and “Calle Visión,” Selected Poems celebrates Rich’s prophetic vision as well as the inventiveness that shaped her enduring art.

[Nora · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars, no doubt. I got to know Adrienne Rich a long time ago from some feminist literature, but my interest in her really sparked after reading the dialogue between her and Audre Lorde in Sister Outsider. Her earlier poems are “good poetry” in the conventional, classical sense, yet they are also pretty boring and lifeless when compared with her later work. Ever since the early 1970s, shaken by the historical events around that time, Rich started to find a way to compose poems that were true to herself and her belief. So the poems become drastically different and better. My personal favorite from this book is a long poem: An Atlas of the Difficult World, which is worth 5 stars in itself. I’d like to see more poetry like Rich’s, alive and powerful, that you can’t turn your head away from.

[Natalie D.C. · Rating 5 out of 5]

An expansive collection of renowned poet Adrienne Rich's words that tackle themes of feminism, queerness, and Jewishness. While it took me a whole year to get into this collection, I fully enjoyed every single page of this book. Some poems that stood out to me include "Sources" and "Yom Kippur 1984," but I truly found value in each and every poem included in this collection and I look forward to delving even further into Adrienne Rich's work <3

[Amalie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mange af disse digte var de nymoderne af slagsen, hvor der er mange flotte ord, få rim og sådan lidt en stream-of-consciousness tilgang. Der var også ekstremt mange metaforer, som jeg sikkert var for uintelligent til at forstå. Derfor var denne samling desværre ikke lige min kop te.

[Reeve Klatt · Rating 3 out of 5]

My first time reading Rich. Several poems really caught my attention, and I can see why she is such a well-regarded poet and writer. Her general form and flow of prose was not my favorite style and didn't resonate with me overall.

[chloe · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I am a woman in the prime of life, with certain powers and those powers severely limited by authorities whose faces I rarely see."

Oh how I love you, Adrienne Rich. Stunning prose and as the years pass, her stance on feminism & queerness only get stronger. Too real.

5🌟

[Lukas Sotola]

A somewhat frustrating poet. At times Adrienne Rich absolutely soars for me in works like “Tattered Kaddish,” “Yom Kippur 1984,” parts of “Twenty-One Love Poems,” “Poetry III,” and “What Kind of Times Are These,” among others. But so much of the rest was totally forgettable.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant. Several of these poems broke me wide open. Rich had the talent and skill to convey so many universal thoughts and feelings with her work. I read this a little at a time, savoring it and returning often to my favorites, over a year, and was sad to get to the end.

[Pádraic · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can't remember why I thought I would like Rich's work--probably some popped up online and that made her name stick in my head, and then I grabbed this second-hand. Unfortunately I bounced off almost all of these pretty hard, and even the ones I liked, I didn't love.

[Maddie · Rating 5 out of 5]

"In the Woods" was my absolute favorite (page 39). Adrienne Rich was, is, my feminist everything.

[Shelby · Rating 5 out of 5]

❤️

[ASC Library]

811.5 Ric

[Serena · Rating 2 out of 5]

Frankly this could've been edited down a bit more. With 400 pages of poems and a few themes clearly dear to the author, this volume gets to be quite repetitive.

[annie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Adrienne Rich is the most brilliant poet of the twentieth century.

[Jen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got this book because I wasn’t sure that I wanted a book of her complete poems. This one selects from each of her volumes of poetry (she was deceased at the time of its publication). I found that I almost exclusively liked poems from her book Diving into the Wreck, which won the National Book Award. So in the end, I came away from this volume not wanting to read her complete work but wanting to read Diving into the Wreck in its entirety. This pains me somewhat. I think of Adrienne Rich as a feminist ground-breaker and icon. I came away from this realizing I probably like her essays and books tackling how women are treated more than I like her poetry. I sensed in her reserve in her poetry, that she was not wanting to bring us entirely into the impetus of the poem, holding us at a bit of a distance and not being specific. While that isn’t true of all of her poetry, that’s the feel I was getting from much of it.

One thing that struck me is that in this volume, there was little evidence of her voice as an activist. I don’t know if that’s true of her poetry in general or if it’s a result of the editorial choices in this volume. Most of the poetry was very much about relationship, about how people treat each other, whether individuals or groups.

Not a lot of the poetry in this volume stuck with me. I would read it and then it was gone. Out of 400 pages of poetry, I marked only 12 poems. So I was disappointed that I didn’t connect more with Adrienne Rich’s poetry, especially since her poem “Diving into the Wreck” (from the book by the same name) is one of my favorite poems. I guess more evidence that I’m a fan of specific poems more than I’m a fan of poets.

[Eleanor · Rating 5 out of 5]

On every page, practically, there is a line that reaches into my chest. I choose to love this time for once/With all my intelligence: that one I knew already, thanks to Cheryl Strayed, but what about this: What happens between us/has happened for centuries/we know it from literature//still it happens [...] there are books that describe all this/and they are useless. Or this: The woman who cherished/her suffering is dead [...] I want to go on from here with you/fighting the temptation to make a career of pain. She wants so much to live responsibly, love responsibly. Probably my new favourite poet.