Adrienne Rich

March 29th, 2012

I just heard that Adrienne Rich died. The NY Times obituary ends with this:

What she and her sisters-in-arms were fighting to achieve, she said, was simply this: “the creation of a society without domination.”

Of course her work had a huge influence on me. In fact a chapter of my new book revolves around her. The excerpt above is from a lecture I heard her deliver when I was 23. I wrote down practically everything she said in a notebook.

I wish I had time to write more now but I have just begun my fellowship at the U of Chicago and am so busy I can’t breathe. But here’s another Rich reference. Back when I was still struggling with my book I wrote about a dream I had, and our blog friend Alex K realized that the image came from Rich’s poem Diving Into the Wreck.