Rich, Adrienne 1929–

(Adrienne Cecile Rich)

PERSONAL: Born May 16, 1929, Baltimore, MD; daughter of Arnold Rice (a physician) and Helen Elizabeth (a musician; maiden name, Jones) Rich; married Alfred Haskell Conrad (an economist), June 26, 1953 (died, 1970); partner of Michelle Cliff (a writer and editor), beginning 1976; children: David, Paul, Jacob. Education: Radcliffe College, A.B. (cum laude), 1951.

ADDRESSES: Home—Northern CA. Agent—c/o W. W. Norton Co., 500 5th Ave., New York, NY 10110.

CAREER: Poet and writer. Conductor of workshop, YM-YWHA Poetry Center, New York, NY, 1966–67; visiting lecturer, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA, 1967–69; adjunct professor in writing division, Columbia University, Graduate School of the Arts, New York, NY, 1967–69; City College of the City University of New York, New York, NY, lecturer in SEEK English program, 1968–70, instructor in creative writing program, 1970–71, assistant professor of English, 1971–72, and 1974–75; Fannie Hurst Visiting Professor of Creative Literature, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, 1972–73; Lucy Martin Donnelly fellow, Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, PA, 1975; professor of English, Douglass College, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, 1976–78; A. D. White Professor-at-Large, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 1982–85; Clark Lecturer and distinguished visiting professor, Scripps College, Claremont, CA, 1983, 1984; visiting professor, San Jose State University, San Jose, CA, 1984–96; Burgess Lecturer, Pacific Oaks College, Pasadena, CA, 1986; professor of English and feminist studies, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 1986–92; Marjorie Kovler visiting fellow, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, 1989; National Director, The National Writers' Voice Project, 1992–. Member of advisory board, Boston Woman's Fund, National Writers Union, Sisterhood in Support of Sisters in South Africa and New Jewish Agenda.

MEMBER: PEN, Modern Language Association (honorary fellow, 1985–), National Writers Union, Poetry Society of America, American Academy of Arts and Letters, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Phi Beta Kappa.

AWARDS, HONORS: Yale Series of Younger Poets award for A Change of World, 1951; Guggenheim fellowships, 1952 and 1961; Ridgely Torrence Memorial Award, Poetry Society of America, 1955; Grace Thayer Bradley Award, Friends of Literature (Chicago) for The Diamond Cutters and Other Poems, 1956; Phi Beta Kappa Poet, College of William and Mary, 1960, Swarthmore College, 1965, and Harvard University, 1966; National Institute of Arts and Letters award for poetry, 1961; Amy Lowell traveling fellowship, 1962; Bol-lingen Foundation translation grant, 1962; Bess Hokin Prize, Poetry magazine, 1963; Litt.D., Wheaton College, 1967; National Translation Center grant, 1968; Eunice Tietjens Memorial Prize, Poetry magazine, 1968; National Endowment for the Arts grant, 1970, for poems in American Literary Anthology: 3; Shelley Memorial Award, Poetry Society of America, 1971; Ingram Merrill Foundation grant, 1973–74; National Book Award, 1974, for Diving into the Wreck: Poems, 1971–1972; Litt.D., Wheaton College, 1967; National Medal of the Arts (declined), 1977; National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry nomination, 1978, for The Dream of a Common Language: Poems, 1974–1977; Litt.D., Smith College, 1979; Fund for Human Dignity Award, National Gay Task Force, 1981; Los Angeles Times Book Prize nomination, 1982, for A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far: Poems, 1978–1981; Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, Modern Poetry Association and American Council for the Arts, 1986; Brandeis University Creative Arts Medal in Poetry, 1987; Litt.D., College of Wooster, Ohio, 1988; National Poetry Association Award, 1989, for distinguished service to the art of poetry; Elmer Holmes Bobst Award in Arts and Letters, New York University Library, 1989; Bay Area Book Reviewers Award in Poetry, 1990, 1996; Litt.D., Harvard University, 1990; The Common Wealth Award in Literature, 1991; Robert Frost Silver Medal for Lifetime Achievement in Poetry, Poetry Society of America, 1992; Litt.D., Swarthmore College, 1992; William Whitehead Award of the Gay and Lesbian Publishing Triangle for Lifetime Achievement in Letters, 1992; Lambda Book Award in Lesbian Poetry, 1992, for An Atlas of the Difficult World: Poems, 1988–1991, 1996, for Dark Fields of the Republic, 1991–1995, and 2002, for Fox; Lenore Marshall/Nation Poetry Prize and Los Angeles Times Book Award, 1992, and Poets' Prize, 1993, all for An Atlas of the Difficult World: Poems, 1988–1991, MacArthur Foundation fellowship, 1994; Tanning Prize of the Academy of American Poets, 1996; Wallace Stevens Award for proven mastery in the art of poetry, 1997; Lannan Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award, 1999; Lammy Award for lesbian poetry, Lambda Literary Foundation, 2002, for Fox: Poems, 1998–2000; National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry, 2004, for The School among the Ruins: Poems, 2000–2004.

WRITINGS:

POETRY

A Change of World, with foreword by W.H. Auden, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1951.

Poems, Oxford University Poetry Society (New York, NY), 1952.

The Diamond Cutters and Other Poems, Harper (New York, NY), 1955.

Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law: Poems, 1954–1962, Harper (New York, NY), 1963, revised edition, Norton (New York, NY), 1967.

Necessities of Life, Norton (New York, NY), 1966.

Selected Poems, Chatto & Windus (London, England), 1967.

Leaflets: Poems, 1965–1968, Norton (New York, NY), 1969.

The Will to Change: Poems, 1968–1970, Norton (New York, NY), 1971.

Diving into the Wreck: Poems, 1971–1972, Norton (New York, NY), 1973.

Poems: Selected and New, 1950–1974, Norton (New York, NY), 1974.

Twenty-one Love Poems, Effie's Press (Emeryville, CA), 1977.

The Dream of a Common Language: Poems, 1974–1977, Norton (New York, NY), 1978.

A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far: Poems, 1978–1981, Norton (New York, NY), 1981.

Sources, Heyeck Press (Woodside, CA), 1983.

The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New, 1950–1984, Norton (New York, NY), 1984.

Your Native Land, Your Life, Norton (New York, NY), 1986.

Time's Power: Poems, 1985–1988, Norton (New York, NY), 1988.

An Atlas of the Difficult World: Poems, 1988–1991, Norton (New York, NY), 1991.

Collected Early Poems, 1950–1970, Norton (New York, NY), 1993.

Dark Fields of the Republic, 1991–1995, Norton (New York, NY), 1995.

Selected Poems, 1950–1995, Salmon Publishers (Knockeven, Ireland), 1996.

Midnight Salvage: Poems, 1995–1998, Norton (New York, NY), 1999.

Fox: Poems, 1998–2000, Norton (New York, NY), 2001.

The School among the Ruins: Poems, 2000–2004, Norton (New York, NY), 2004.

Also guest editor for Best American Poetry of 1996, Scribner (New York, NY), 1996.

PROSE

Of Woman Born: Motherhood As Experience and Institution, Norton (New York, NY), 1976, 10th anniversary edition with a revised introduction, 1986.

Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying (pamphlet), Motheroot Publishing/ Pittsburgh Women Writers (Pittsburgh, PA), 1977.

On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose, 1966–1978, Norton (New York, NY), 1979.

Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence (pamphlet), Antelope Publications (Denver, CO), 1980.

Blood, Bread and Poetry: Selected Prose, 1979–1986, Norton (New York, NY), 1986.

(With Susan Morland) Birth of the Age of Women, Wild Caret (Hereford, England), 1991.

What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics, Norton (New York, NY), 1993.

Arts of the Possible: Essays and Conversations, Norton (New York, NY), 2001.

TRANSLATOR

(And editor, with Aijaz Ahmad and William Stafford) Poems by Ghalib, Hudson Review (New York, NY), 1969.

Mark Insingel, Reflections, Red Dust (New York, NY), 1973.

Also contributor of translations to Poets on Street Corners: Portraits of Fifteen Russian Poets, edited by Olga Carlisle, Random House (New York, NY), 1968; A Treasury of Yiddish Poetry, edited by Irving Howe and Eliezer Greenberg, Holt (New York, NY), 1969; and Selected Poems of Mirza Ghalib, edited by Aijaz Ahmad, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1971, World Treasury of Poetry, 1996.

OTHER

Ariadne: A Play in Three Acts and Poems (drama), J.H. Furst (Baltimore, MD), 1939.

Not I, but Death: A Play in One Act (drama), J.H. Furst (Baltimore, MD), 1941.

Columnist, American Poetry Review, 1972–73. Coeditor, Sinister Wisdom, 1981–84; contributing editor, Chrysalis: A Magazine of Women's Culture; founding coeditor, Bridges: A Journal of Jewish Feminists and Our Friends, 1989–92.

SIDELIGHTS: "Adrienne Rich is not just one of America's best feminist poets," wrote Margaret Atwood in Second Words: Selected Critical Prose, "or one of America's best woman poets, she is one of America's best poets." Rich's poetry has not always been described as "feminist." She "began as [a] poet-ingenue," according to Carol Muske in the New York Times Book Review, "polite copyist of Yeats and Auden, wife and mother. She has progressed in life (and in her poems …) from young widow and disenchanted formalist, to spiritual and rhetorical convalescent, to feminist leader … and doyenne of a newly-defined female literature." In Poet and Critic David Zuger described a similar metamorphosis in Rich's work: "The twenty-year-old author of painstaking, decorous poems that are eager to 'maturely' accept the world they are given becomes a … poet of prophetic intensity and 'vision-ary anger' bitterly unable to feel at home in a world 'that gives no room / to be what we dreamt of being.'"

Albert Gelpi observed that Rich's stance in her early poems is far from feminist. In American Poetry since 1960: Some Critical Perspectives, Gelpi noted that in W.H. Auden's foreword to A Change of World, Rich's introductory book of poetry, Auden said her poems "are neatly and modestly dressed, speak quietly but do not mumble, respect their elders but are not cowed by them, and do not tell fibs." "In other words," Gelpi explained, the poems reflect "the stereotype—prim, fussy and schoolmarmish—that has corseted and strait-laced women-poets into 'poetesses' whom men could deprecate with admiration." In Writing Like a Woman, Alicia Ostriker stated, "Rich at this point [was] a cautious good poet in the sense of being a good girl, a quality noted with approval by her early reviewers."

Many critics found in Rich's book Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law: Poems, 1954–1962 the first indication of both the end of Rich's imitative efforts and the beginning of her concern with feminist issues. In Southwest Review, Willard Spiegelman called Snapshots "the liminal volume, attempting a journey from one self, world, poetic form, to another." Spiegelman noted that the poem "Roof-walker" articulates Rich's precarious position as a poet balancing between two modes of writing: "exposed, larger than life, / and due to break my neck." Ostriker also commented on the change in Rich's poetry evident in Snapshots. Calling the collection "Rich's break-through volume," Ostriker noted that the book's title poem "consists of fragmentary and odd-shaped sections instead of stanzas, and has the immediacy and force which Rich did not attempt earlier."

Snapshots offers the reader a change in the form of Rich's poetry, as Ostriker observed. This change, according to Anne Newman in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, includes "dropping the initial capital letter in each line, increasing enjambment, using speech cadences in place of formal meters, limiting the use of rhyme, and varying stanza length." The content of Rich's poetry changes also. Her work begins to reflect her personal confrontation with what it means to be female in a male-dominated society. In Rich's 1971 essay, "When We Dead Awaken: Writing As Re-vision," quoted by Newman, the poet comments: "In the late fifties I was able to write, for the first time, directly about experiencing myself as a woman—Until then I had tried very hard not to identify myself as a female poet. Over two years I wrote … 'Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law' (1958–60), in a longer, looser mode than I'd ever trusted myself with before. It was an extraordinary relief to write that poem."

Rich has been criticized for the harsh depictions of males in her poetry. This is especially true in reviews of Diving into the Wreck: Poems, 1971–1972 and A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far: Poems, 1978–1981. Ostriker commented on what she calls Rich's "partisanship" and observed, "Men in [Diving into the Wreck] are depicted universally and exclusively as parisitic on women, emotionally threatened by them, brutal … and undeserving of pity." In Parnassus Helen Vendler noted that the poem "Rape" from Diving into the Wreck, seems to bestow on all men the image of the sadistic rapist portrayed in the work. "This poem," she wrote, "like some others [in the volume], is a deliberate refusal of the modulations of intelligence in favor of … propaganda." Similarly, in the Voice Literary Supplement, Kathryn Kilgore called A Wild Patience "a ritual of man-hatred" while in the Times Literary Supplement Jay Parini stated that in some of the poems in the volume Rich "wilfully misrepresents men, committing the same act of distortions that she complains about elsewhere."

On the other hand, Diving into the Wreck was granted the prestigious National Book Award (Rich, along with Audre Lorde and Alice Walker, declined the award as an individual but accepted it on behalf of women whose voices have been silenced, and donated the cash award to the Sisterhood of Black Single Mothers). The book was praised by many critics. For example, Michigan Quarterly Review contributor Laurence Goldstein contended that it is "Rich's finest single volume," and observed that the title poem is "a modern classic." In Harvard magazine Ruth Whitman called the same piece "one of the great poems of our time." In her Ms. review of the book, Erica Jong noted that Rich handles political issues well in her poetry. "Rich is one of the few poets," she stated, "who can deal with political issues in her poems without letting them degenerate into social realism." Focusing on the title poem, Jong also denies that Rich is anti-male. A portion of the poem reads: "And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair / streams black, the merman in his armored body. / We circle silently / about the wreck. / We dive into the hold. / I am she: I am he." Jong commented, "This stranger-poet-survivor carries 'a book of myths' in which her/his 'names do not appear.' These are the old myths … that perpetuate the battle between the sexes. Implicit in Rich's image of the androgyne is the idea that we must write new myths, create new definitions of humanity which will not glorify this angry chasm but heal it." A Wild Patience received similar if not as abundant praise. For instance, Sara Mandlebaum noted in Ms. that in the volume "the radicalism of [Rich's] vision … remains strong and invigorating: the writing as lyrical … and moving as ever—and even more honest."

Rich's prose has caused as much controversy as her poetry. Newman discussed the reception of Of Woman Born: Motherhood As Experience and Institution, Rich's study of the concept of motherhood. "Some critical reactions to the book," Newman observed, "are almost vehement, claiming Rich's perspective has been clouded by a rage that has led her into biased statements and a strident style. Others, who have read it with more sympathy, call it scholarly and well researched and insist that it should not be read … for polemics." In her New York Times Book Review critique of the volume, for example, Francine du Plessix Gray wrote, "It is vexing to see such a dedicated feminist playing the dangerous game of using the oppressor's tactics. Going from mythologization of history to remythologization of male and female character traits, Rich indulges in stereotypes throughout the book." Speaking of the same book, but representative of the other half of the critics, Laura E. Casari commented in Prairie Schooner: In Of Woman Born Rich "thoroughly documents the powerlessness of women in a patriarchal culture and vividly depicts its results."

Rich's second prose work, On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose, 1966–1978, furthers her feminist aesthetic. This volume contains one of Rich's most-noted essays, "When We Dead Awaken: Writing as ReVision," in which Rich clarifies the need for female self-definition. It was during this time, in 1976, that Rich also came out as a lesbian. In Blood, Bread and Poetry: Selected Prose, 1979–1986, Rich continues to explore issues of lesbianism while addressing such topics as racial identity and racism. Rich's fourth book of prose, What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics, contains meditations on politics, poetry, and poets. Focusing on such writers as Muriel Rukeyser, Audre Lorde, Wallace Stevens, and June Jordan, Rich emphasizes her belief that poetry is inevitably political and that "poetry can break open locked chambers of possibility, restore numbed zones to feeling, recharge desire." Rich, according to Nation writer Jan Montefiore, goes on to "address the social, ecological, and political dilemmas and contradictions of the United States, defining and identifying herself with a specifically American stream of radical poetry."

In the verse collections Your Native Land, Your Life, Time's Power: Poems, 1985–1988, and An Atlas of the Difficult World: Poems, 1988–1991, Rich addresses new issues while continuing to develop feminist themes. The long sequence titled "Sources" in Your Native Land, Your Life is Rich's first major attempt to confront her Jewish heritage and the effects of the Holocaust on her life and work. In "Living Memory," a long poem in Time's Power, Rich faces the consequences of time and aging and also meditates on her bond to the American landscape. Marilyn Hacker pointed out in the Nation that this volume ranges "backward through personal and international history, geographically from southern California to Vermont to the Golan Heights. These texts present a variety of dramatis personae, and do not flinch at the knottiest moral conundrums." An Atlas of the Difficult World focuses on such issues as poverty, the Persian Gulf War, and the exploitation of minorities and women. Rich's use of personal experience, first-person narratives, and language prompted critics to compare this collection to the works of Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman. Hudson Review critic Dick Allen observed, "Rich's book is truly a small atlas; but it is also the mature poetry of a writer who knows her own power, who speaks in the passionate, ambitious blending of the personal and the universal forever present in major work. She will be read and studied for centuries to come."

In 1997 at the age of seventy, Rich refused the National Medal for the Arts, and brought the debate over government funding for the arts to national attention. In her letter to Jane Alexander of the National Endowment for the Arts, Rich explained her refusal of the award, "There is no simple formula for the relationship of art to justice. But I do know that art—in my own case the art of poetry—means nothing it if simply decorates the dinner table of power which holds it hostage." Rich's actions showed that time had not quelled her passion. Noted reviewer Traci Hukill in Metro Active, Rich's "criticism of a cynical administration that has blessed a swiftly widening gap in wealth and power is assurance that time has not mellowed her craving for justice."

However, upon publication of Midnight Salvage, Poems, 1995–1998, at least one critic saw a "more somberly reflective" Rich. As Adam Newey noted in the New Statesman, "The tide of anger so evident in earlier work has abated here." But according to Dana Gioia in the San Francisco Magazine, Rich remained driven by her quest for justice. "She is a human acetylene torch," Gioia wrote, "intent on searing through oppression and convention." Though he seems to find her perhaps too serious ("Rich is too busy denouncing human folly ever to stop and enjoy it."), he asserted that "No other living poet … has made such a profound impression on American intellectual life." Midnight Salvage is a collection of poems "with the spiritual pull of overcoming," noted Ace Boggess in the Adirondack Review. He explained that he received the book on the day before the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. While the poems preceded the events of that day, Boggess saw a connection between the attacks and the poems. "I soon realized it was because the poems in this book contain something universal," he contended, "a common reality revealed in the finite experiences of the one." According to reviewer Rafael Campo in the Progressive, "Central to Rich's latest book, Midnight Salvage, is the quest for personal happiness—and the problem of defining 'happiness'—in an American society that continues to exploit its most defenseless citizens, and in the face of a larger world where contempt for human rights leads to nightmare. Her solution has as much to do with empathy as it does with revolution."

Rich continued to focus on social injustice and introspection in Fox: Poems, 1998–2000, a short volume of just twenty-five poems. Critic Ruthann Robson felt that the collection was too short, writing in the Lambda Book Report that "the cumulative effect of this volume may be blunted by its brevity." Robson also asserted that the poems lacked Rich's usual wit and spark. But Boggess was impressed more with the collection's complexity than its brevity. "Seeing the beautiful structure of 'Architecture' or grasping the prophetic feel of 'Ends of the Earth,' one gets drawn deeply into the poems in Fox the same way one gets drawn into the relationship crises of friends," Boggess wrote. "It can be a struggle at times and a pleasure at others, but one always learns something along the way and hopes to live long enough to see a conclusion."

In Arts of the Possible, a return to prose, Rich once again examines her role as a feminist, Jewish, lesbian poet-activist and encourages similar introspection in her readers. The book is a collection of eleven essays, four of which were previously published and included to give a sense of the progression of Rich's thoughts. According to B.A. St. Andrews in World Literature Today, the book "externalizes various debates within the passionate mind of Adrienne Rich." The same reviewer described Rich's writing in the book as "unflinching not because she redefines the Truth but because she serves it, not because she answers questions but because she raises them at all." Wendy Mnookin in the Radcliffe Quarterly summarized that "Rich explores the role of the artist and, indeed, anyone 'trying to live conscientiously.'" St. Andrews also noted that "Rich requires of us an ancient, humble, salubrious act: a rigorous examination of conscience with the aim of self-governance and self-improvement."

Rich won the National Book Critics Circle Award for her collection The School among the Ruins: Poems, 2000–2004. The book of poems attempts to capture the myriad world events that have defined the beginning of the twenty-first century. Throughout her career, Rich has been exceedingly drawn away from formal verse, and the predominantly short prose poems in the volume are free verse meditations on "the displacement of exiles, the encroachment of modernity on human dignity, and the effects of America's war against terror on the stateside psyche," noted Meghan O'Rourke in Artforum. Although O'Rourke felt the collection veered too much into "rhetoric," Library Journal Diane Scharper felt that Rich's "poetry [is] achieved by juxtaposition and contrast." Donna Seaman, writing in Booklist noted the snippets of cell-phone and television-news dialogue, concluding that Rich "get[s] the fractured timbre of the times just right."

Through over fifty years of public introspection and examination of society and self, Adrienne Rich has chronicled her journey in poetry and prose. "I began as an American optimist," she commented in Credo of a Passionate Skeptic, "albeit a critical one, formed by our racial legacy and by the Vietnam War … I became an American Skeptic, not as to the long search for justice and dignity, which is part of all human history, but in the light of my nation's leading role in demoralizing and destabilizing that search, here at home and around the world. Perhaps just such a passionate skepticism, neither cynical nor nihilistic, is the ground for continuing."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Atwood, Margaret,Second Words: Selected Critical Prose, Beacon Press (Boston, MA), 1984.

Dickie, Margaret, Stein, Bishop & Rich: Lyrics of Love, War & Place, University of North Carolina Press (Chapel Hill, NC), 1997.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 5: American Poets since World War II, First Series, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1980.

Ostriker, Alicia, Writing Like a Woman, University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, MI), 1983.

Oxford Companion to Women's Writing in the United States, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1995.

Shaw, Robert B., editor, American Poetry since 1960: Some Critical Perspectives, Dufour Editions (Chester Springs, PA), 1974.

Sielke, Sabine, Fashioning the Female Subject: The In-tertextual Networking of Dickinson, Moore, and Rich, University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor, MI), 1997.

Templeton, Alice, The Dream and the Dialogue: Adrienne Rich's Feminist Poetics, University of Tennessee Press (Knoxville, TN), 1994.

Werner, Craig Hansen, Adrienne Rich: The Poet and Her Critics, American Library Association (Chicago, IL), 1988.

PERIODICALS

Adirondack Review, September 13, 2001, Ace Boggess, review of Fox: Poems, 1998–2000.

Advocate, June 22, 1999, review of Midnight Salvage, p. 7; June 19, 2001, review of Arts of the Possible, p. 97.

American Book Review, August, 1994, p. 16; November, 2001, review of Arts of the Possible, p. 5.

American Poetry Review, September-October, 1973; March-April, 1975; July-August, 1979; July-August, 1992, pp. 35-38.

Artforum, October-November, 2004, Meghan O'Rourke, review of The School among the Ruins: Poems, 2000–2004, p. 54.

Atlantic, June, 1978.

Belles Lettres, fall, 1994, p. 37.

Bloomsbury Review, March, 1999, review of Midnight Salvage, p. 7.

Booklist, January 1, 1999, review of Midnight Salvage, p. 821; March 15, 1999, review of Midnight Salvage, p. 1276; October 1, 2001, Donna Seaman, review of Fox, p. 295; August, 2004, Donna Seaman, review of The School among the Ruins, p. 1982.

Bookwatch, June, 1999, review of Midnight Salvage, p. 2.

Choice, October, 2001, review of Arts of the Possible, p. 4.

Christian Science Monitor, August 18, 1966; July 24, 1969; January 26, 1977.

Contemporary Literature, winter, 1975; winter, 1992, pp. 645-664; spring, 1993, pp. 61-87.

Economist, March 13, 1999, review of Midnight Salvage, p. 14.

Harper's, December, 1973; November, 1978.

Harvard Magazine, July-August, 1975; January-February, 1977.

Hudson Review, autumn, 1971; autumn, 1975; summer, 1992, pp. 319-330; winter, 2002, review of Fox, p. 687.

Kirkus Reviews, January 15, 1999, review of Midnight Salvage, p. 104; March 1, 2001, review of Arts of the Possible, p. 1527.

Lambda Book Report, October 2001, Ruthann Robson, review of Fox, p. 25.

Library Journal, April 1, 1999, review of Midnight Salvage, p. 57; September 15, 2001, review of Fox, p. 85; April 15, 2002, review of Fox, p. 90; August, 2004, Diane Scharper, review of The School among the Ruins, p. 86.

Los Angeles Times, April 23, 1986; June 7, 1986.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, October 17, 1982; March 25, 1984; April 1, 2001, review of Arts of the Possible, p. 11.

Los Angeles Times Book Section, August 3, 1997, Adrienne Rich, "Why I Refused the National Medal for the Arts."

Massachusetts Review, autumn, 1983.

Michigan Quarterly Review, summer, 1976; winter, 1983; fall, 1996, pp. 586-607.

Modern Poetry Studies, autumn, 1977.

Monthly Review, June 2001, Adrienne Rich, "Credo of a Passionate Skeptic."

Ms., July, 1973; December, 1981; August 2001, review of Arts of the Possible, p. 80.

Nation, July 28, 1951; October 8, 1973; July 1, 1978; December 23, 1978; June 7, 1986, pp. 797-798; October 23, 1989; November 30, 1992, pp. 673-674.

New Leader, May 26, 1975.

New Republic, November 6, 1976; December 9, 1978; June 2, 1979; January 7-14, 1985.

New Statesman, March 26, 1999, Adam Newey, review of Midnight Salvage, p. 57.

Newsweek, October 18, 1976.

New Yorker, November 3, 1951; April 25, 1994, p. 111.

New York Review of Books, May 7, 1970; October 4, 1973; September 30, 1976; December 17, 1981; November 21, 1991, pp. 50-56.

New York Times, May 13, 1951; August 25, 1973.

New York Times Book Review, July 17, 1966; May 23, 1971; December 30, 1973; April 27, 1975; October 10, 1976; June 11, 1978; April 22, 1979; December 9, 1981; December 20, 1981; January 7, 1985; January 20, 1985; December 8, 1991, p. 7; November 7, 1993, p. 7; April 21, 1996, pp. 32-33.

Off Our Backs, January, 2002, review of Arts of the Possible, p. 51.

Parnassus, fall-winter, 1973; spring-summer, 1979.

Partisan Review, winter, 1978.

Poet and Critic, Volume 9, number 2, 1976; Volume 10, number 2, 1978.

Poetry, February, 1955; July, 1963; March, 1970; February, 1976; August, 1992, pp. 284-304; April 1999, "The Best American Poetry, 1996."

Prairie Schooner, summer, 1978.

Progressive, January, 1994, Matthew Rothschild, "Adrienne Rich: 'I Happen to Think Poetry Makes a Huge Difference'"; July, 1999, Rafael Campo, review of Midnight Salvage, p. 43; January, 2002, review of Fox, p. 40.

Publishers Weekly, March 26, 2001, review of Arts of the Possible, p. 83; August 6, 2001, review of Fox, p. 86; November 1, 1999, review of Midnight Salvage, p. 55.

Radcliffe Quarterly, summer, 2001, Wendy Mnookin, review of Arts of the Possible.

Salmagundi, spring-summer, 1973; spring-summer, 1979.

San Francisco Magazine, January, 1999, Dana Gioia, review of Midnight Salvage. Saturday Review, December 18, 1971; November 13, 1976.

Southern Review, April, 1969; summer, 1999, review of Southern Midnight, p. 621.

Southwest Review, autumn, 1975.

Times Literary Supplement, November 23, 1967; June 9, 1972; April 20, 1973; November 12, 1982; July 20, 1984; July 8, 1994, p. 9.

Village Voice, November 8, 1976.

Voice Literary Supplement, December, 1981.

Washington Post Book World, December 23, 1973; November 14, 1976; December 5, 1976; December 3, 1978; May 6, 1979; May 20, 1982; November 11, 2001, review of Fox, p. 295.

Women's Review of Books, December, 1983; April, 1987, pp. 5-6; March, 1990, pp. 12-13.

World Literature Today, winter, 1979; autumn, 2000, Sandra Cookson, review of Midnight Salvage, p. 821; summer-autumn, 2002, B.A. St. Andrews, review of Arts of the Possible, p73.

Yale Review, autumn, 1956; autumn, 1978; April, 1999, review of Midnight Salvage, p. 175.

ONLINE

American Poems, http://www.americanpoems.com/ (June 2, 2003), "Adrienne Rich."

Dana Gioia Online, http://www.danagioia.com/ (January, 1999), review of Midnight Salvage.

Metro Active, http://www.metroactive.com/ (June 6, 2003), Traci Hukill, "Adrienne Rich Explores Horror and Hope in Midnight Salvage."

Norton Poets Online, http://www.nortonpoets.com/ (June 2, 2003).

St. Martin's Press, http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/ (June 2, 2003).