Adrienne Rich

Rich's work is able to chronicle the evolution of a poet's life, from phases of personal growth and individual accomplishment to more communal, community-based lesbian/feminist activism. Personal and political converge, the political is also in here and the essence of condition.

Refuses to believe that art is antipolitical.

Influenced by the open styles of Pound, Williams, and Levertov, and the confessional mode of Lowell, Plath, Sexton, and Berryman

"Poetry is, among other things, a criticism of language. Poetry is above all a concentration of the power of language, which is the power of our ultimate relationship to everything in the universe."

Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law (1963)
conveys anger and confusion she felt during those years of confinement

Rich smashes icons of domesticity: the coffee pot, raked gardens

Uses collage and allusion like Eliot would, but includes places where women were actively shut out

Diving into the Wreck (1973)
"the thing I came for: / the wreck and not the story of the wreck / the thing itself and not the myth"

both mermaids and mermen are down there, victims of patriarchy

I am she: I am he

We are, I am, you are

"a book of myths / in which/ our names do not appear"