Recovered from FSRN’s earlier site via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. Originally published March 30, 2012.
Poet Adrienne Rich, known for her fierce criticism of US policy, her advocacy for civil rights and her commitment to the women’s movement, died this week at the age of 82. Rich’s extensive work earned numerous honors, including a National Book Award in 1974 and a MacArthur Foundation Genius Award in 1994. Her strong empathy for the oppressed and her relentless pursuit of social justice often drew attention. In 1997, she refused the National Medal of Arts, citing the “increasingly brutal impact of racial and economic injustice” in the country. In 1976, her publication of “Twenty-One Love Poems,” which openly explored love between women, was seen as a groundbreaking work in the burgeoning LGBT movement. In London 2002, Rich read from her poem, Dreamwood.
“If this were a map, it would be the map of her last stage of her life / Not a map of choices, but a map of variations on the one great choice / It would be the map by which she could see the end of touristic choices, of distances blued and purpled by romance / By which she would recognize that poetry isn’t revolution, but a way of knowing why it must come.”
Audio from the PoetryFoundation.org. Adrienne Rich died on Tuesday, in her home in Santa Cruz, California.
