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Paroles d'un monde difficile
Sélection de poèmes d'Adrienne Rich, jamais traduite en France. Une voix lyrique familière, intime, une voix de femme américaine, porteuse de tradition, une voix whitmanienne, transcendantaliste, et gauchissant cette tradition pour l'élargir. Il y a chez Adrienne Rich une adhérence à la vie. Engagée dans les conflits et la lutte qui se mènent pour aller de l'inconscient au dicible, puis à l'action. Sa poésie, dit-elle, est « une longue conversation avec les aînés et avec le futur ».
107 pages, Paperback
First published October 17, 1991
34 people are currently reading
1886 people want to read
About the author
Adrienne Rich
137 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 - 30 of 90 reviews
December 31, 2013
I know you are reading this poem because there is nothing else / left to read / there where you have landed, stripped as you are'
The is an extraordinary collection by Adrienne Rich. If you like your poetry brave, original, potent and driven by truth & conviction, there is no better place to start. It's all at gut level and there is a sense that you'll always carry it there.
The is an extraordinary collection by Adrienne Rich. If you like your poetry brave, original, potent and driven by truth & conviction, there is no better place to start. It's all at gut level and there is a sense that you'll always carry it there.
December 25, 2017
XIII (Dedications)
I know you are reading this poem
late, before leaving your office
of the one intense yellow lamp-spot and the darkening window
in the lassitude of a building faded to quiet
long after rush-hour. I know you are reading this poem
standing up in a bookstore far from the ocean
on a grey day of early spring, faint flakes driven
across the plains’ enormous spaces around you.
I know you are reading this poem
in a room where too much has happened for you to bear
where the bedclothes lie in stagnant coils on the bed
and the open valise speaks of flight
but you cannot leave yet. I know you are reading this poem
as the underground train loses momentum and before running
up the stairs
toward a new kind of love
your life has never allowed.
I know you are reading this poem by the light
of the television screen where soundless images jerk and slide
while you wait for the newscast from the intifada.
I know you are reading this poem in a waiting-room
of eyes met and unmeeting, of identity with strangers.
I know you are reading this poem by fluorescent light
in the boredom and fatigue of the young who are counted out,
count themselves out, at too early an age. I know
you are reading this poem through your failing sight, the thick
lens enlarging these letters beyond all meaning yet you read on
because even the alphabet is precious.
I know you are reading this poem as you pace beside the stove
warming milk, a crying child on your shoulder, a book in your
hand
because life is short and you too are thirsty.
I know you are reading this poem which is not in your language
guessing at some words while others keep you reading
and I want to know which words they are.
I know you are reading this poem listening for something, torn
between bitterness and hope
turning back once again to the task you cannot refuse.
I know you are reading this poem because there is nothing else
left to read
there where you have landed, stripped as you are.
I know you are reading this poem
late, before leaving your office
of the one intense yellow lamp-spot and the darkening window
in the lassitude of a building faded to quiet
long after rush-hour. I know you are reading this poem
standing up in a bookstore far from the ocean
on a grey day of early spring, faint flakes driven
across the plains’ enormous spaces around you.
I know you are reading this poem
in a room where too much has happened for you to bear
where the bedclothes lie in stagnant coils on the bed
and the open valise speaks of flight
but you cannot leave yet. I know you are reading this poem
as the underground train loses momentum and before running
up the stairs
toward a new kind of love
your life has never allowed.
I know you are reading this poem by the light
of the television screen where soundless images jerk and slide
while you wait for the newscast from the intifada.
I know you are reading this poem in a waiting-room
of eyes met and unmeeting, of identity with strangers.
I know you are reading this poem by fluorescent light
in the boredom and fatigue of the young who are counted out,
count themselves out, at too early an age. I know
you are reading this poem through your failing sight, the thick
lens enlarging these letters beyond all meaning yet you read on
because even the alphabet is precious.
I know you are reading this poem as you pace beside the stove
warming milk, a crying child on your shoulder, a book in your
hand
because life is short and you too are thirsty.
I know you are reading this poem which is not in your language
guessing at some words while others keep you reading
and I want to know which words they are.
I know you are reading this poem listening for something, torn
between bitterness and hope
turning back once again to the task you cannot refuse.
I know you are reading this poem because there is nothing else
left to read
there where you have landed, stripped as you are.
August 31, 2022
Challenging collection - each piece disparate in style and theme, many seemed to be laden with deeper meaning. Still some beautiful phrasing.
3.5 rounded up.
3.5 rounded up.
March 29, 2012
Where are we moored?
What are the bindings?
What behooves us?
What are the bindings?
What behooves us?
March 6, 2011
One of the later poems in this book includes a phrase from Simone Weil, and the full sentence the phrase comes from is given in the Notes: "The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say to him: 'What are you going through?'" The idea of answering or imagining or feeling one's way into that what are you going through? is a central idea of this slim volume of Rich's poems from the late 1980s and early 1990s: it's there from the very start of the very first poem and keeps coming up. The first poem, the title poem, is probably my favorite; it and the other long poem of this book ("Eastern War Time") are to me the most compelling because there's room in them for a broadness of experience and/or time, a sense of both the big picture/history (industrial agriculture, the Holocaust) and the personal, and also room for both the horrors and loveliness of the world:
(from the first section of "An Atlas of the Difficult World"):
Some early favorite lines, from the same section of the same poem:
I like, too, how Rich writes about nature, wind and weather and apple trees and succulents, the different feel of different places (a cabin or a brook in Vermont, the California coast).
(from the first section of "An Atlas of the Difficult World"):
I don't want to know
wreckage, dreck and waste, but these are the materials
and so are the slow lift of the moon's belly
over wreckage, dreck, and waste, wild treefrogs calling in
another season, light and music still pouring over
our fissured, cracked terrain. (4)
Some early favorite lines, from the same section of the same poem:
voice of the freeway, night after night, metal streaming downcoast
past eucalyptus, cypress, agribusiness empires
THE SALAD BOWL OF THE WORLD, gurr of small planes
dusting the strawberries, each berry picked by a hand (3)
I like, too, how Rich writes about nature, wind and weather and apple trees and succulents, the different feel of different places (a cabin or a brook in Vermont, the California coast).
October 19, 2025
this is my sign to read more poem collection. substack does have some good reccs.
definitely reccomend.
definitely reccomend.
Read
October 11, 2023Je connaissais Adrienne Riche pour ses réflexions féministes, notamment sur l’hétéronormativité et le lesbianisme. Comme elle est encore peu traduite en France, la découvrir à travers sa poésie était une bonne occasion. Malheureusement je suis un peu passée à côté de cette lecture : j’ai peu de sensibilité à la poésie et la mise en page parfois étrange avec des grands espaces au milieu des phrases m’a pas mal perturbé. Je relirai peut-être plus tard ce recueil dans un autre état d’esprit.
Un grand merci à Babelio et aux éditions La rumeur libre de m’avoir permis cette découverte !
Un grand merci à Babelio et aux éditions La rumeur libre de m’avoir permis cette découverte !
March 7, 2008
All I can say about this book is that several years ago I read the poem that begins with "...I know you are reading this poem..." and it completely revitalized my desire to read more poetry, which (if anyone has seen my list of books) obviously has been a life's pursuit.
Enjoy. This book is awesome.
Enjoy. This book is awesome.
April 10, 2017
Because I've always loved Adrienne Rich I hadn't realized the ways her poetry is very different from what I usually read. Rich doesn't work from an ekphrastic place or really an image or purely language driven place ... her poems are driven by their own powerful expressions of economy and conversation. Which isn't to say they don't tell stories or use beautiful image but really what is haunting and striking is what Rich tries to tell and manages to tell so clearly. Her poems have a sort of impact where once you have finished reading them you realize you are actually still trying to read the same line over-- almost like an after taste or sun spots when you close your eyes. Going to read Wreck next and see what I can make out of two in a row.
May 21, 2020
The title sequence is magnificent--a sharp, dark, inventive riff on Whitman's songs to America. Rich's wrestling match with our democracy's beauties and many failures is as relevant now as it was thirty years ago. There are other powerful poems as well, including "Tattered Kadish."
August 7, 2025
i’m gonna try coming back to this at some point. i’ve like individual poems from rich that i’ve read before, but i was just not connecting with the voice in this collection at all.
February 11, 2024
hur lär du ett barn det du själv vägrar tro på?
hur säger du slå ut min blomma, blinka min stjärna
och de hatar oss för det vi är?
Hade föredragit att läsa på originalspråk, men bibblan höll inte med. Oavsett fanns det många referenser som jag inte skulle snappat upp, för amerikansk allmänbildning (och allmän historia) är inte min starka sida. Med det sagt fanns det också väldigt många delar som talade starkt till mig; därav viljan att känna till originalen.
September 25, 2018
XIII (DEDICATIONS)
I know you are reading this poem
late, before leaving your office
of the one intense yellow lamp-spot and the darkening window
in the lassitude of a building faded to quiet
long after rush-hour. I know you are reading this poem
standing up in a bookstore far from the ocean
on a grey day of early spring, faint flakes driven
across the plains’ enormous spaces around you.
I know you are reading this poem
in a room where too much has happened for you to bear
where the bedclothes lie in stagnant coils on the bed
and the open valise speaks of flight
but you cannot leave yet. I know you are reading this poem
as the underground train loses momentum and before running
up the stairs
toward a new kind of love
your life has never allowed.
I know you are reading this poem by the light
of the television screen where soundless images jerk and slide
while you wait for the newscast from the intifada.
I know you are reading this poem in a waiting-room
of eyes met and unmeeting, of identity with strangers.
I know you are reading this poem by fluorescent light
in the boredom and fatigue of the young who are counted out,
count themselves out, at too early an age. I know
you are reading this poem through your failing sight, the thick
lens enlarging these letters beyond all meaning yet you read on
because even the alphabet is precious.
I know you are reading this poem as you pace beside the stove
warming milk, a crying child on your shoulder, a book in your
hand
because life is short and you too are thirsty.
I know you are reading this poem which is not in your language
guessing at some words while others keep you reading
and I want to know which words they are.
I know you are reading this poem listening for something, torn
between bitterness and hope
turning back once again to the task you cannot refuse.
I know you are reading this poem because there is nothing else
left to read
there where you have landed, stripped as you are.
THAT MOUTH
This is the girl’s mouth, the taste
daughters, not sons, obtain:
These are the lips, powerful rudders
pushing through groves of kelp,
the girl’s terrible, unsweetened taste
of the whole ocean, its fathoms: this is that taste.
This is not the father’s kiss, the mother’s:
a father can try to choke you,
a mother drown you to save you:
all the transactions have long been enacted.
This is neither a sister’s tale nor a brother’s:
strange trade-offs have long been made.
This is the swallow, the splash
of krill and plankton, that mouth
described as a girl’s—
enough to give you a taste:
Are you a daughter, are you a son?
Strange trade-offs have long been made.
I know you are reading this poem
late, before leaving your office
of the one intense yellow lamp-spot and the darkening window
in the lassitude of a building faded to quiet
long after rush-hour. I know you are reading this poem
standing up in a bookstore far from the ocean
on a grey day of early spring, faint flakes driven
across the plains’ enormous spaces around you.
I know you are reading this poem
in a room where too much has happened for you to bear
where the bedclothes lie in stagnant coils on the bed
and the open valise speaks of flight
but you cannot leave yet. I know you are reading this poem
as the underground train loses momentum and before running
up the stairs
toward a new kind of love
your life has never allowed.
I know you are reading this poem by the light
of the television screen where soundless images jerk and slide
while you wait for the newscast from the intifada.
I know you are reading this poem in a waiting-room
of eyes met and unmeeting, of identity with strangers.
I know you are reading this poem by fluorescent light
in the boredom and fatigue of the young who are counted out,
count themselves out, at too early an age. I know
you are reading this poem through your failing sight, the thick
lens enlarging these letters beyond all meaning yet you read on
because even the alphabet is precious.
I know you are reading this poem as you pace beside the stove
warming milk, a crying child on your shoulder, a book in your
hand
because life is short and you too are thirsty.
I know you are reading this poem which is not in your language
guessing at some words while others keep you reading
and I want to know which words they are.
I know you are reading this poem listening for something, torn
between bitterness and hope
turning back once again to the task you cannot refuse.
I know you are reading this poem because there is nothing else
left to read
there where you have landed, stripped as you are.
THAT MOUTH
This is the girl’s mouth, the taste
daughters, not sons, obtain:
These are the lips, powerful rudders
pushing through groves of kelp,
the girl’s terrible, unsweetened taste
of the whole ocean, its fathoms: this is that taste.
This is not the father’s kiss, the mother’s:
a father can try to choke you,
a mother drown you to save you:
all the transactions have long been enacted.
This is neither a sister’s tale nor a brother’s:
strange trade-offs have long been made.
This is the swallow, the splash
of krill and plankton, that mouth
described as a girl’s—
enough to give you a taste:
Are you a daughter, are you a son?
Strange trade-offs have long been made.
November 12, 2016
The universe keeps delivering me books to read. I was at my favorite used bookstore and looking for my next poetry collection to read. I grabbed this based on the title, only to realize it was by one of my - if not my ultimate - favorite poem! I'll admit, I was a bit down when I started reading this. But Adrienne Rich's writing shines through everything, electric. As always, this collection was beautiful. Well written explorations of historical and personal social justice.
August 17, 2018
Some really strong, interesting poems.
January 27, 2022
A dark woman, head bent, listening for something
- a woman's voice, a man's voice or
voice of the freeway, night after night, metal streaming downcoast
past eucalyptus, cypress, agribusiness empires
THE SALAD BOWL OF THE WORLD, gurr of small planes
dusting the strawberries, each berry picked by a hand
in close communion, strawberry blood on the wrist,
Malathion in the throat, communion,
the hospital at the edge of the fields,
prematures slipping from unsafe wombs,
the labour and delivery nurse on her break watching
planes dusting rows of pickers.
Elsewhere declarations are made: at the sink
rinsing strawberries flocked and gleaming, fresh from market
one says: "On the pond this evening is a light
finer than my mother's handkerchief
received from her mother, hemmed and initialled
by the nuns in Belgium."
One says: "I can lie for hours
reading and listening to music. But sleep comes hard.
I'd rather lie awake and read." One writes:
"Mosquitoes pour through the cracks
in this cabin's walls, the road
in winter is often impassable,
I live here so I don't have to go out and act,
I'm trying to hold onto my life, it feels like nothing."
One says: "I never knew from one day to the next
where it was coming from: I had to make my life happen
from day to day. Every day an emergency.
Now I have a house, a job from year to year.
What does that make me?"
In the writing workshop a young man's tears
wet the frugal beard he's grown to go with his poems
hoping they have redemption stored
in their lines, maybe will get him home free. In the classroom
eight-year-old faces are grey. The teacher knows which children
have not broken fast that day,
remembers the Black Panthers spooning cereal.
* * *
goes through what must be gone through:
that catalogue she is pitching out
mildew spores velvet between the tiles
soft hairs, nests, webs
in corners, edges of basins, in the teeth
of her very comb. All that rots or rusts
in a night, a century.
Balances memory, training, sits in her chair
hairbrush in hand, breathing the scent of her own hair
and think: I have been the weir
where disintegration stopped.
Lifts her brush once like a thrown thing
lays is down at her side like a stockpiled weapon
crushes out the light. Elsewhere
dust chokes the filters, dead leaves rasp in the grate.
Clogged, the fine nets bulge
and she is not there.
* * *
Memory lifts her smoky mirror: 1943,
single isinglass window kerosene
stove in the streetcar barn halfset moon
8:15 a.m. Eastern War Time dark
Number 29 clanging in and turning
looseleaf notebook Latin for Americans
Breasted's History of the Ancient World
on the girl's lap
money for lunch and war-stamps in her pocket
darkblue wool wet acrid on her hands
three pools of light weak ceiling bulbs
a schoolgirl's hope-split terrified
sensations wired to smells
of kerosene wool and snow
and the sound of the dead language
praised as key torchlight of the great dead
Grey spreading behind still-flying snow
the lean and sway of the streetcar she must ride
to become one of a hundred girls
rising white-cuffed and collared in a study hall
to sing For those in peril on the sea
under plaster casts of the classic frescoes
chariots horses draperies certitudes.
* * *
Through Corralitos under rolls of cloud
between winter-stiff, ranged apple-trees
each netted in transparent air,
thin sinking light, heartsick within and filmed
in heartsickness around you, gelatin cocoon
invisible yet impervious - to the hawk
steering against the cloudbank, to the clear
oranges burning at the rancher's gate
rosetree, agave, stiff beauties holding fast
with or without your passion,
the pruners freeing up the boughs
in the unsearched faith these strange stiff shapes will bear.
- a woman's voice, a man's voice or
voice of the freeway, night after night, metal streaming downcoast
past eucalyptus, cypress, agribusiness empires
THE SALAD BOWL OF THE WORLD, gurr of small planes
dusting the strawberries, each berry picked by a hand
in close communion, strawberry blood on the wrist,
Malathion in the throat, communion,
the hospital at the edge of the fields,
prematures slipping from unsafe wombs,
the labour and delivery nurse on her break watching
planes dusting rows of pickers.
Elsewhere declarations are made: at the sink
rinsing strawberries flocked and gleaming, fresh from market
one says: "On the pond this evening is a light
finer than my mother's handkerchief
received from her mother, hemmed and initialled
by the nuns in Belgium."
One says: "I can lie for hours
reading and listening to music. But sleep comes hard.
I'd rather lie awake and read." One writes:
"Mosquitoes pour through the cracks
in this cabin's walls, the road
in winter is often impassable,
I live here so I don't have to go out and act,
I'm trying to hold onto my life, it feels like nothing."
One says: "I never knew from one day to the next
where it was coming from: I had to make my life happen
from day to day. Every day an emergency.
Now I have a house, a job from year to year.
What does that make me?"
In the writing workshop a young man's tears
wet the frugal beard he's grown to go with his poems
hoping they have redemption stored
in their lines, maybe will get him home free. In the classroom
eight-year-old faces are grey. The teacher knows which children
have not broken fast that day,
remembers the Black Panthers spooning cereal.
- An Atlas of the Difficult World, I, pg. 3-4
* * *
goes through what must be gone through:
that catalogue she is pitching out
mildew spores velvet between the tiles
soft hairs, nests, webs
in corners, edges of basins, in the teeth
of her very comb. All that rots or rusts
in a night, a century.
Balances memory, training, sits in her chair
hairbrush in hand, breathing the scent of her own hair
and think: I have been the weir
where disintegration stopped.
Lifts her brush once like a thrown thing
lays is down at her side like a stockpiled weapon
crushes out the light. Elsewhere
dust chokes the filters, dead leaves rasp in the grate.
Clogged, the fine nets bulge
and she is not there.
- She, pg. 29
* * *
Memory lifts her smoky mirror: 1943,
single isinglass window kerosene
stove in the streetcar barn halfset moon
8:15 a.m. Eastern War Time dark
Number 29 clanging in and turning
looseleaf notebook Latin for Americans
Breasted's History of the Ancient World
on the girl's lap
money for lunch and war-stamps in her pocket
darkblue wool wet acrid on her hands
three pools of light weak ceiling bulbs
a schoolgirl's hope-split terrified
sensations wired to smells
of kerosene wool and snow
and the sound of the dead language
praised as key torchlight of the great dead
Grey spreading behind still-flying snow
the lean and sway of the streetcar she must ride
to become one of a hundred girls
rising white-cuffed and collared in a study hall
to sing For those in peril on the sea
under plaster casts of the classic frescoes
chariots horses draperies certitudes.
- Eastern War Time, I, pg. 35
* * *
Through Corralitos under rolls of cloud
between winter-stiff, ranged apple-trees
each netted in transparent air,
thin sinking light, heartsick within and filmed
in heartsickness around you, gelatin cocoon
invisible yet impervious - to the hawk
steering against the cloudbank, to the clear
oranges burning at the rancher's gate
rosetree, agave, stiff beauties holding fast
with or without your passion,
the pruners freeing up the boughs
in the unsearched faith these strange stiff shapes will bear.
- Through Corralitos Under Rolls of Cloud, I, pg. 46
October 21, 2023
Diving back into poetry after a long time away. She has a gift for imagery, for careful deployment of questions. Some very beautiful moments. I was brought to tears on an Amtrak train from NY to DC. 3 stars only because several poems speak, I assume beautifully, to a specific identity that is not my own and so in my personal cannon I’m not sure how often I will return to this.
—
But it’s warm, warm,
pneumonia wind, death of innocence wind, unwinding wind, time-hurtling wind. And it has a voice in the house. I hear conversations that can’t be happening, overheard in the bedrooms and I’m not talking of ghosts. The ghosts are here of course but they speak plainly.
- An atlas of the difficult world
—
Minerals, traces, rumors I am made from, morsel, minuscule fibre, one woman
like and unlike so many, fooled as to her destiny, the scope of her task?
- An atlas of the difficult world
—
I know you are reading this poem as the underground train loses momentum and before running up the stairs
toward a new kind of love
your life has never allowed.
…
I know you are reading this poem listening for something, torn between bitterness and hope
turning back once again to the task you cannot refuse.
I know you are reading this poem because there is nothing left to read
there where you have landed, stripped as you are.
- An atlas of the difficult world
—
How day breaks, when it breaks, how clear and light the moon melting into moon-colored air
moist and sweet, here on the western edge.
Love for the world, and we are part of it.
How the poppies break from their sealed envelopes
she did not tell.
What are you going through, there on the other edge?
- For a friend in travail
—
But it’s warm, warm,
pneumonia wind, death of innocence wind, unwinding wind, time-hurtling wind. And it has a voice in the house. I hear conversations that can’t be happening, overheard in the bedrooms and I’m not talking of ghosts. The ghosts are here of course but they speak plainly.
- An atlas of the difficult world
—
Minerals, traces, rumors I am made from, morsel, minuscule fibre, one woman
like and unlike so many, fooled as to her destiny, the scope of her task?
- An atlas of the difficult world
—
I know you are reading this poem as the underground train loses momentum and before running up the stairs
toward a new kind of love
your life has never allowed.
…
I know you are reading this poem listening for something, torn between bitterness and hope
turning back once again to the task you cannot refuse.
I know you are reading this poem because there is nothing left to read
there where you have landed, stripped as you are.
- An atlas of the difficult world
—
How day breaks, when it breaks, how clear and light the moon melting into moon-colored air
moist and sweet, here on the western edge.
Love for the world, and we are part of it.
How the poppies break from their sealed envelopes
she did not tell.
What are you going through, there on the other edge?
- For a friend in travail
October 16, 2024
I've decided to let a random number generator decide what books I read this month (all my books are numbered because I have Anxiety), and the first book it generated was #770 so it was time for An Atlas of the Difficult World! Adrienne Rich had been on my radar as a poet I needed to read for a while and came highly recommended to me by friends, but I had never read any of her work. Now that I have, I can't believe I waited this long!
In An Atlas of the Difficult World, Rich weaves together the personal and the political in a way that will just absolutely wrecked me. It's a hard balance to strike, making those two sides of the coin blend together seamlessly. But Rich, as a poet and a feminist, understands that the personal is always political. It's a part of her daily reality, and so it is a part of her art and poetry. In several of her poems, she explores the effects of World War II on Jewish survivors as they are surrounded by the objects of a lost life, now the keepers of stories that are hard to tell. The Dream-Site is perhaps her most overtly political poem, questioning patriotism and what it means to be a citizen without offering solutions or grand statements. Rich's poems are not about answers but instead interested in exploring the questions.
On the more personal side of her poetry, I deeply enjoyed Dedications and Final Notations. I read those poems and was like, "Oh yeah, makes sense this was nominated for a Pulitzer." It was honest and critical and yet radically hopeful. I never got the sense that Rich had given up on the world. Instead, she was holding up a mirror in hopes she could make it better.
I will definitely be checking out more Adrienne Rich poetry in the future. I highly recommend this collection and also reading it while listening to Stick Season (Forever Edition) by Noah Kahan. They pair really well together.
In An Atlas of the Difficult World, Rich weaves together the personal and the political in a way that will just absolutely wrecked me. It's a hard balance to strike, making those two sides of the coin blend together seamlessly. But Rich, as a poet and a feminist, understands that the personal is always political. It's a part of her daily reality, and so it is a part of her art and poetry. In several of her poems, she explores the effects of World War II on Jewish survivors as they are surrounded by the objects of a lost life, now the keepers of stories that are hard to tell. The Dream-Site is perhaps her most overtly political poem, questioning patriotism and what it means to be a citizen without offering solutions or grand statements. Rich's poems are not about answers but instead interested in exploring the questions.
On the more personal side of her poetry, I deeply enjoyed Dedications and Final Notations. I read those poems and was like, "Oh yeah, makes sense this was nominated for a Pulitzer." It was honest and critical and yet radically hopeful. I never got the sense that Rich had given up on the world. Instead, she was holding up a mirror in hopes she could make it better.
I will definitely be checking out more Adrienne Rich poetry in the future. I highly recommend this collection and also reading it while listening to Stick Season (Forever Edition) by Noah Kahan. They pair really well together.
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September 12, 2023A short & beautiful book of poems. I am into another poetry phase at least for a bit - I’d been avoiding all the ones I checked out form the library for a couple weeks or so not sure why - Adrienne Rich never ceases to amaze me with the way she writes. I rly enjoyed that this collection in particular faces a little bit more explicitly towards the political
If I was ranking only the titular poem: five million stars. What an earnest, honest attempt to grapple with what it means to be an American as a white Jew, as a white queer Jew, yeah it just felt pertinent to me. I also loved the poems exploring Judaism in general. Definitely very beautiful & interesting & painful, from such a different place than I am in an educational way
I am always grateful to Adrienne Rich & I will not stop reading her until I have read all of it at least twice
If I was ranking only the titular poem: five million stars. What an earnest, honest attempt to grapple with what it means to be an American as a white Jew, as a white queer Jew, yeah it just felt pertinent to me. I also loved the poems exploring Judaism in general. Definitely very beautiful & interesting & painful, from such a different place than I am in an educational way
I am always grateful to Adrienne Rich & I will not stop reading her until I have read all of it at least twice
March 6, 2021
god i love adrienne rich so much
”What homage will be paid to a beauty built to last
from inside out, executing the blueprints of resistance and mercy”
-
“I know you are reading this poem / because life is short and you too are thirsty.
I know you are reading this poem listening for something, torn
between bitterness and hope
turning back once again to the task you cannot refuse.
I know you are reading this poem because there is nothing else
left to read
there where you have landed, stripped as you are.”
-
“You cannot live on me alone
you cannot live without me
I’m here
in your mirror, pressed leg to leg beside you
intrusive inappropriate bitter flashing
with what makes me unkillable though killed”
”What homage will be paid to a beauty built to last
from inside out, executing the blueprints of resistance and mercy”
-
“I know you are reading this poem / because life is short and you too are thirsty.
I know you are reading this poem listening for something, torn
between bitterness and hope
turning back once again to the task you cannot refuse.
I know you are reading this poem because there is nothing else
left to read
there where you have landed, stripped as you are.”
-
“You cannot live on me alone
you cannot live without me
I’m here
in your mirror, pressed leg to leg beside you
intrusive inappropriate bitter flashing
with what makes me unkillable though killed”
October 27, 2017
Just not my poet, I guess.
"I don't want to hear how he beat her after the earthquake...."
and in another poem:
"I don't want to know how he tracked them
along the Appalachian trail...."
I didn't want to hear about those things either but then the poem goes on and tells all about it. Even when it's not unpleasant, I just didn't get much out of it.
I stopped reading eventually and skimmed.
"I don't want to hear how he beat her after the earthquake...."
and in another poem:
"I don't want to know how he tracked them
along the Appalachian trail...."
I didn't want to hear about those things either but then the poem goes on and tells all about it. Even when it's not unpleasant, I just didn't get much out of it.
I stopped reading eventually and skimmed.
November 15, 2017
I will come back and read this one again. The poems are quietly intense. This time I let them wash over, just the language or the image. I did not dig. I did not sit. I read with my brain half lit and my eyelids half closed. Even with this small half awake engagement, this is a book I will pick up again.
April 20, 2019
I really liked it, eventhough it's not my favorite poem collection of Adrienne Rich. My favorite poem of hers is probably in this collection, Dedications, the one beginning with "I know you are reading this poem". Could be the poem I would recommand to anyone asking themselves if they should read poetry.
October 14, 2024
There is strength in these poems, I can feel the language flexing, pushing hard against what is difficult in this world, and there is beauty, and interesting phrasing, and intensity, and much of it I loved. There are poems I could not find my way into, but I read them for the way that Rich forms her thoughts, the way the poems are crafted, and the long title poem will haunt me for along time.
August 7, 2020
Jewish lesbian feminist icon. “A patriot is not a weapon. A patriot is one who wrestles for the soul of her country.” My favorites were: dedications, Eastern War Time, Tattered Kaddish, For a Friend in Travail, Darklight, and Final Notations.
April 7, 2021
The love and hurt that is America oozes out of every page I read thus far. The love and hurt of and for this country that has conquered my soul and will never surrender it to its old self again. Rich's poems so eerily speak of this conquest!
November 15, 2022
These poems are later than what I've previously read from her, and they are less clear. There are pieces about war and other awful things happening in this world, despite the beauty and potential of nature and humanity.
June 6, 2024
This book looks at everything from the act reading poetry, to contemporary worker abuses in our food industry, as well as prisons, and through historical injustices that have paved the road to contemporary times. An amazing collection of poems that was easy to want to engage with the material.
September 2, 2017
Rich's ear for language is exceptional, and her poetry is terse and powerful.
September 4, 2017
4.5 stars
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