Introduction

This issue began as a panel titled “The Poetic Impact of Adrienne Rich” at the 2014 American Literature Association (ALA) Symposium on American Poetry. Drawing on our work and the writings of other scholars, at the invitation of Editor Wendy Martin, we have brought together a special issue of Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal on Adrienne Rich to bring new perspectives to her work and reflect on her impact on American letters and life.

At a time when we are forced to confront the role of literature (and the arts more broadly) in a turbulent and hostile political moment, it is important to reflect on Rich, her role as “citizen-poet,” and the value her writings continue to hold for us. Throughout her career, Rich consistently strived to open space for those who go unheard, questioned social hierarchies and class inequities, interrogated government (in)actions, and called on readers to engage in our democracy. In her article in The Los Angeles Times explaining her decision to refuse the National Medal for the Arts (1997), she explained her understanding of the role of art in a democracy:

art needs to grow organically out of a social compost nourishing to everyone, a literate citizenry, a free, universal, public education complex with art as an integral element, a society honoring both human individuality and the search for a decent, sustainable common life. In such conditions, art would still be a voice of hunger, desire, discontent, passion, reminding us that the democratic project is never-ending. (Arts 105)

The articles in this issue address Rich’s unfaltering belief in the power of art—particularly poetry—to speak to and question the human experience and to consider, as she wrote in Arts of the Possible, “what is humanly possible” (154).

Both Rich and her critics have downplayed or dismissed her first two books of poetry as overly formalist and lacking the intensity and innovation of her later work. Alexandra Gold challenges these dismissals in “Adrienne Rich’s Persistent Survival” through her focus on the poem “Autumn Equinox,” from The Diamond Cutters (1955). She not only reconsiders Rich’s early poetry, but also examines how reading the poems in their socio-historical context reveals a feminist response to 1950s academic, social, and historical conventions that challenges characterizations of her writing pre-1963 as less important than her later work.

As Gold makes clear, Rich’s shift to a more explicitly feminist poetics by the 1970s is well acknowledged. In “Snapshots of a Feminist Poet: Adrienne Rich and the Poetics of the Archive,” Meredith Benjamin suggests a new approach—“a poetics of the archive”—for reading Rich’s work from this era. Drawing on Rich’s papers at the Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute, Benjamin explores how these archived materials bring to light the degree to which Rich herself was invested in the project of archiving women’s lives—both in the sense of having a tradition on which to draw and in creating a new one through her poetry.

In the 1970s, Rich also first articulated her concept of “re-vision,” in her essay “When We Dead Awaken.” In “Adrienne Rich’s ‘Collaborations’: Re-vision as Durational Address,” Talia Shalev reconsiders this concept by comparing two versions of Rich’s “Collaborations” alongside a series of letters she exchanged about the poem with poet Lois Bar-Yaacov. To understand Rich’s revision of this poem, which centers around the question of address, Shalev explores a question posed by Bar-Yaacov in response to the first version: “Who are the poets that Adrienne Rich addresses?” Shalev suggests that the questions of address and re-vision are linked, arguing that “through re-vision Rich asks that her various acts of address be considered durational.”

“Collaborations,” as well as Rich’s epistolary exchange with Bar-Yaacov, first appeared in Bridges, a Jewish-feminist journal that was co-founded by Rich. Brooke Lober’s “Adrienne Rich’s ‘Politics of Location,’ US Jewish Feminism, and the Question of Palestine” contextualizes Rich’s work in the late 20th century US Jewish feminist movement within feminist identity politics. Lober engages Rich’s theory of a “politics of location” and her discussion of Jewish identity and antiracism to examine “the discourse of identity politics that conditioned Jewish feminist approaches to imperialism, racism, and Zionism” in the 1980s.

In the essay “‘try telling yourself / you are not accountable’: Adrienne Rich as Citizen Poet,” Maggie Rehm also turns to Rich’s idea of a “politics of location.” Tracing Rich’s exploration of the roles of the poet and poetry from the 1950s into the 2000s, Rehm argues that while Rich’s theories sharpen over time, she has been throughout her career a “citizen poet.” Rehm examines the ways this role develops as Rich seeks an understanding of both the accountability of a poet and the possibilities—for questioning, for change, and for connection—inherent in her art.

Finally, Jeannette E. Riley considers the later stages of Rich’s poetic career, which have to date received considerably less attention than her earlier work. In “‘questing toward what might otherwise be:’ Adrienne Rich’s Later Work,” Riley examines Rich’s interrogation of government authority as well as her ongoing belief in the power of poetry, of language, to resist violence, create change, and move us toward “what might otherwise be” (What is 234) in poems written since 2000.

To complement these new perspectives, we invited a group of scholars—Albert Gelpi, Sandra Gilbert, Sylvia Henneberg, Claire Keyes, Wendy Martin, Andrea O’Reilly, Ed Pavlić, and Craig Werner—who have been prominent commentators on Adrienne Rich’s writings to reflect on what they see as the legacy of Rich’s work. Their responses offer critical perspectives on Rich as well as personal reflections, highlighting the ongoing need for Rich’s prose and poetry.

Rounding off the issue, the book reviews consider Rich’s work in a variety of contexts: the rhetorical tradition, the pedagogical realm, alongside fellow “feminist superhero” Jayne Cortez, and within the broader lineage of American women poets.

There are a number of other facets of Rich’s work not included in the scope of this issue, but that we hope other scholars will take up in the years to come—among them the legacy of her work on sexuality; her roles as editor, mentor, and teacher; ways in which the Rich archives may reveal new perspectives on her work; her influence on a younger generation of poets; and her relationships with other poets and writers.

In closing, we thank the Adrienne Rich Literary Trust for permissions and the photograph for the journal’s cover (© Rollie McKenna).