Adrienne Rich (May 16, 1929 – March 27, 2012) was an influential American poet, essayist, and prose writer. Rich’s self-reflexive poetry and prose exhibit themes that can be traced across the timeline of her life’s work. While her earlier works like A Change of World (1951) were formally regular, sharing thematic concerns as well as meter and rhyme scheme with the kind of modernism championed by male writers like W.H. Auden, her later works established her as a radical feminist, progressive, and anti-war artist. She shifted to a predominantly free verse style with heavy enjambment. Rich stated that she was “interested in the possibilities of the ‘plainest statement’," and used plainspoken language to advance her progressive ideals (qtd. in Rankine). This progression follows her own life trajectory: her earlier works were written during her young adulthood as a college student, wife, and mother, while her later works paralleled her own lesbian self-discovery. Alongside this journey, her works started addressing aspects of society that were taboo, as well as advocating for social justice and equality. Her radically progressive stance and powerful, innovative poetry have made her one of the most influential artists in recent times.
Her contributions to what Elaine Showalter called the “female” phase of feminism, as well as the burgeoning field of gender studies, left a profound impact on not just the literary canon, but also on the psyche of readers who connect to her vivid poetry and analytical prose. Through its themes and moods, her work reflects a woman who evolved over time: she sharply questioned the status quo in women’s lives, especially questioning her own assumptions and opinions through her poetry. The effect of Rich’s evolution from the beginning of her writing career in the 1950s to her death in 2012 informed her poetic praxis; her poetry is consistent in its reflection of a woman ever-committed to redefining herself in ways that were truer, less polluted, and more accurate. As such, it reflects a changing relationship with cultural phenomena: Rich often wrote in response to culture and its effects. These writings helped shape the field of feminist theory and left their mark on American literature.
In addition to its transgressive themes, Rich’s poetry is notable for its unconventional style: as her career progressed, Rich eschewed meter and rhyme, writing in a conversational free verse with heavy enjambment. Both thematically and formally, her poetry became a landscape for her to break barriers. Rich herself said that poetry can be a “liberative language” (qtd. In Rankine), and free-verse poems like “Diving into the Wreck” and “In Those Years” explore the potential of language. Rich's prose elaborates some of the themes of her poetry. For example, “Someone is Writing a Poem” is a call towards collective action, and poetry where “an ‘I’ can become a ‘we’ without extinguishing others” (Rich). The essays can serve as a lens through which to better understand her poetic works.
Over the span of her nearly 70-year career, Rich published twenty-four collections of her own poetry and wrote numerous prose collection, including several influential essays that helped shape the fields of feminist scholarship, gender studies, and sexuality studies. Rich stands out in 20th century American poetry as a writer who reached near-universal acclaim while also advancing radical ideas. During her lifetime, Rich was close friends with Audre Lorde, and their friendship helped both writers to see the intertwined struggles of anti-racist and feminist advocates. Rich's activism has left a lasting legacy, contributing to the field of gender studies as well as influencing a generation of poets to abandon the difficulty of high modernism and to write plainspoken poems that speak to political realities.
