Adrienne Rich, Poet Of Our Time

Judith Lockyer, Ph.D., Professor of English emerita, Albion College.

Wednesdays. 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 noon. Feb 3, 10, 17, 24.

Held in Google Meeting; instructions will be provided to participants. Limited to 30 participants—if you are interested in this class, be sure to read the “Policy for Limited Enrollment Classes.”

U.S. poet Adrienne Rich died in 2012, leaving those who read her poetry a rich legacy of passionate and powerful explorations of the false assumptions and lies about our history and present that perpetuate inequality and smother hope. We will analyze her feminism and her early anger about women’s identities as tied only to their bodies. At the same time, her poems create images of the world “revisioned.” She never fails to connect humans to her larger subject—the powerful lies our past, present, and futures. Her interrogation of power leads her to find an expansive creative space. Rich’s poetry gives her a powerful means to interrogate language, humanity, the lives of men, women and children, as well as the failures of old powers and unexamined lives.

Her poetry is perhaps more relevant than ever as we live in such confused, confusing times. Adrienne Rich is certainly a poet of our time because she thinks about our environment and the damage industries have left behind. She writes about love and war, lies and hard truths, our need for words that will not lie, even calling for a new language in Dreams of a Common Language. She writes poetry as “if [our] lives depend upon it.” ** Her poetry gives us much to think and talk about. As she moves through poetic forms, she shows us how ancient poetic forms such as the ghazal (originally Persian) and more recent lyric poetry is the most powerful way to think more critically about our lives and our land. (**from Essay VI in her book What is Found There)

Book: Adrienne Rich, 1950-2012: Selected Poems (New York: W.W. Norton). Available at Stirling Books and Brew and the Albion College bookstore.