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The poems Sources and After Dark document her relationship with her father, describing how she worked hard to fulfill her parents' ambitions for her—moving into a world in which she was expected to excel. In later years, Rich went to Roland Park Country School , which she described as a "good old fashioned girls' school [that] gave us fine role models of single women who were intellectually impassioned. Auden for the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award ; he went on to write the introduction to the published volume.
Following her graduation, Rich received a Guggenheim Fellowship to study at Oxford for a year. Following a visit to Florence, she chose not to return to Oxford, and spent her remaining time in Europe writing and exploring Italy.
In , Rich married Alfred Haskell Conrad , an economics professor at Harvard University she met as an undergraduate. She said of the match: "I married in part because I knew no better way to disconnect from my first family. I wanted what I saw as a full woman's life, whatever was possible. In , she published her second volume, The Diamond Cutters , a collection she said she wished had not been published, saying "a lot of the poems are incredibly derivative," and citing a "pressure to produce again We are, I am, you are by cowardice or courage the one who find our way back to this scene carrying a knife, a camera a book of myths in which our names do not appear.
The s began a period of change in Rich's life: she received the National Institute of Arts and Letters award , her second Guggenheim Fellowship to work at the Netherlands Economic Institute , and the Bollingen Foundation grant for the translation of Dutch poetry She comments, "I was seen as 'bitter' and 'personal'; and to be personal was to be disqualified, and that was very shaking because I'd really gone out on a limb I realised I'd gotten slapped over the wrist, and I didn't attempt that kind of thing again for a long time.
Moving her family to New York in , Rich became involved with the New Left and became heavily involved in anti-war, civil rights, and feminist activism. Rising tensions began to split the marriage, and Rich moved out in mid, getting herself a small studio apartment nearby. In , Rich began her partnership with Jamaican-born novelist and editor Michelle Cliff , which lasted until her death. In her controversial work Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution , published the same year, Rich acknowledged that, for her, lesbianism was a political as well as a personal issue, writing, "The suppressed lesbian I had been carrying in me since adolescence began to stretch her limbs.
In integrating such pieces into her work, Rich claimed her sexuality and took a role in leadership for sexual equality. Ultimately, they moved to Santa Cruz, where Rich continued her career as a professor, lecturer, poet, and essayist. Rich and Cliff took over editorship of the lesbian arts journal Sinister Wisdom — The organization works to increase communication between women and connect the public with forms of women-based media.
Through widening her audience to women across the whole wide world Rich not only influences a larger movement but more importantly, she invites all women to consider their existence. Through imagining geographical locations on a map as history and as a place where women are created, and further focusing on the geographical locations, Rich ask women to examine where they themselves were created. In an attempt to try to find a sense of belonging in the world, Rich asks the audience not to begin with a continent, country, or house, but to start with the geography closest to themselves —which is their body.
In an encouraging call for the women's movement, Rich discusses how the movement for change is an evolution in itself. Through de-masculinizing itself and de-Westernizing itself, the movement becomes a critical mass of so many different, voices, languages and overall actions. She pleads that the movement must change in order to experience change. She further insists that women must change it. She furthers this notion by noting her own exploration of the body, her body, as female, as white, as Jewish and as a body in a nation.
Throughout her essay, Rich relates back to the concept of location. She recounts her growth towards understanding how the women's movement grounded in the Western culture is limited to the concerns of white women to the verbal and written indications of Black United States citizens. Such professions have allowed her to experience the meaning of her whiteness as a point of location for which she needed to take responsibility.
On the role of the poet, she wrote, "We may feel bitterly how little our poems can do in the face of seemingly out-of-control technological power and seemingly limitless corporate greed, yet it has always been true that poetry can break isolation, show us to ourselves when we are outlawed or made invisible, remind us of beauty where no beauty seems possible, remind us of kinship where all is represented as separation.
There's a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted who disappeared into those shadows. I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don't be fooled this isn't a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here, our country moving closer to its own truth and dread, its own ways of making people disappear.
In , Rich declined the National Medal of Arts in protesting against the House of Representatives' vote to end the National Endowment for the Arts as well as policies of the Clinton Administration regarding the arts generally and literature in particular, stating that "I could not accept such an award from President Clinton or this White House because the very meaning of art, as I understand it, is incompatible with the cynical politics of this administration In the early s, Rich participated in anti-war activities, protesting against the threat of war in Iraq, both through readings of her poetry and other activities.
Rich died on March 27, , at the age of 82 in her Santa Cruz, California home. Her son, Pablo Conrad, reported that her death resulted from long-term rheumatoid arthritis. Rich was survived by her sons, two grandchildren [42] and her partner Michelle Cliff. Rich wrote several pieces that explicitly tackle the rights of women in society. In Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law she offers a critical analysis of the life of being both a mother and a daughter-in-law, and the impact of their gender in their lives. Diving Into the Wreck was written in the early 'seventies, and the collection marks the start of her darkening tone as she writes about feminism and other social issues.
In doing so, she becomes an example for other women to follow in the hopes that continued proactive work against sexism will eventually counteract it. Her poems are also famous for their feminist elements. One such poem is "Power", which was written about Marie Curie , one of the most important female icons of the 20th century for discovering radiation.
In this poem, she discusses the element of power and feminism. More specifically, it tackles the problem that Curie was slowly succumbing to the radiation she acquired from her research, to which Rich refers in the poem as her source of power.
This poem discusses the concept of power, particularly from a woman's point of view. Besides poems and novels, Rich also wrote and published a number of nonfiction books that tackle feminist issues.
Sat, Nov 28, PM. I love the outdoors. The brick yard, business, my cry, star ratings, ca, california is full profile. Rich was survived by her sons, two grandchildren [42] and her partner Michelle Cliff. My name is Eva.
Especially the Bread and Poetry contains the famous feminist essay entitled "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence", and Feminism and Community. The works listed above, as well as her various interviews and documentaries, demonstrate that Rich has an in-depth perspective on feminism and society. For one, Rich has something to say about the use of the term itself.
According to her, she prefers to use the term "women's liberation" rather than feminism. For her, the latter term is more likely to induce resistance from women of the next generation. Also, she fears that the term would amount to nothing more than a label if it is used extensively. On the other hand, using the term women's liberation means that women can finally be free from factors that can be seen as oppressive to their rights.
Rich's views on feminism can be found in her works. She says in Of Woman Born that "we need to understand the power and powerlessness embodied in motherhood in patriarchal culture. In this book, she wrote:. Our future depends on the sanity of each of us, and we have a profound stake, beyond the personal, in the project of describing our reality as candidly and fully as we can to each other.
Given the feminist conditions in the s—s era, it can be said that Rich's works on feminism are revolutionary. Her views on equality and the need for women to maximize their potential can be seen as progressive during her time. Her views strongly coincide with the feminist way of thinking during that time period. According to Rich, society as a whole is founded on patriarchy and limits the rights of women.
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For equality to be achieved between the sexes, the prevailing notions will have to be readjusted to fit the female perspective. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
American poet, essayist and feminist. Alfred Haskell Conrad.
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