“anger can be visionary, a kind of cleansing clarity”
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Adrienne Rich
Adrienne Cecile Rich was an American poet, essayist and feminist. She was called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century", and was credited with bringing "the oppression of women and lesbians to the forefront of poetic discourse". Rich criticized the rigid identities that are sometimes created by feminism, called for feminism that is flexible and o…
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culture · American poet, essayist and feminist (1929–2012) · poet · essayist · writer · women's rights activist · peace activist · feminist · also Adrienne Rich, Adrienne Cecile Rich, Adrienne Cécile Rich, Adrienne Riche, Adrienne C. Rich, Rich
Born 16 May 1929 · Died 27 March 2012 · Q270705
53 published statements · 0 followers
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Miss Rich, who is, I understand, 21 years old, displays a modesty not so common with that age, which disclaims any extraordinary vision, and a love for her medium, a determination to ensure that whatever she writes shall, at least, not be shoddily made.
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2026· 7 entries
“Miss Rich, who is, I understand, 21 years old, displays a modesty not so common with that age, which disclaims any extraordinary vision, and a love for her medium, a determination to ensure that whatever she writes shall, at least, not be shoddily made.”
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“Women have often felt insane when cleaving to the truth of our experience. 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.”
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“white, Jewish, anti-Semite, racist, anti-racist, once-married lesbian, middle-class, feminist, exmatriate Southerner, split at the root; that I will never bring them whole.”
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“could have been stronger had it drawn on more of the literature by Black women toward which Toni Morrison”
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“feminism became a political and spiritual base from which I could move to examine rather than try to hide my own racism, recognize that I have anti-racist work to do continuously within myself”
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“Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,”
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2025· 1 entry
JSTOR Daily: The Power of Adrienne Rich: A Biography
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2012· 4 entries
Time: Adrienne Rich
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At the age of 82 in her Santa Cruz, California, home
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Died 2012-03-27.
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“To become a token woman—whether you win the Nobel Prize or merely get tenure at the cost of denying your sisters—is to become something less than a man … since men are loyal at least to their own world-view, their laws of brotherhood and self-interest.”
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2009· 2 entries
Rich came forward with a statement in support of the U
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Despite initially having reservations about the movement, Rich endorsed the call for a cultural and academic boycott of Israel, denouncing "the Occupation's denial of Palestinian humanity, destruction of Palestinian live
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2006· 2 entries
Awarded National Book Award (2006).
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“poetry has the capacity to remind us of something we are forbidden to see. A forgotten future: a still uncreated site whose moral architecture is founded not on ownership and dispossession, the subjection of women, outcast and tribe, but on the continuous redefining of freedom – that word now held under house arrest by the rhetoric of the”
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2004· 1 entry
Awarded National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry (2004).
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2003· 1 entry
Awarded Bollingen Prize (2003).
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2002· 1 entry
Was appointed a chancellor of the newly augmented board of the Academy of American Poets, along with Yusef Komunyakaa, Lucille Clifton, Jay Wright (who declined the honor), Louise Glück, Heather McHugh, Rosanna Warre
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1997· 1 entry
Rich declined the National Medal of Arts in protest 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, an
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1996· 1 entry
Awarded Wallace Stevens Award (1996).
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1994· 1 entry
Awarded MacArthur Fellows Program (1994).
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1993· 1 entry
And Commonwealth Award in Literature in 1991
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1992· 5 entries
Awarded Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets (1992).
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Awarded Poets' Prize (1992).
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Won Robert Frost Medal (1992).
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Awarded Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize (1992).
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Rich became a grandmother to Julia Arden Conrad and Charles Reddington Conrad
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1991· 1 entry
Awarded Common Wealth Award of Distinguished Service (1991).
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1990· 1 entry
A journal for which Rich served as editor
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1986· 2 entries
Awarded Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize (1986).
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Published the essay in her prose collection Blood, Bread, and Poetry
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1983· 1 entry
“Resisting Amnesia: History and Personal Life”
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1981· 3 entries
Rich co-presented the keynote address for the National Women's Studies Association Convention in Storrs, Connecticut, along with Audre Lorde, delivering her speech entitled "Disobedience is What NWSA is Potentially About
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“is probably going to be taken more seriously in some quarters than the Black woman scholar whose combined experience and research give her far more penetrating knowledge and awareness than mine. I will be taken more seriously because I am white, [..] and because the invisibility of the woman of color who is the scholar/critic or the poet or the novelist is part of the structure of my privilege, even my credibility.”
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“A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far”
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1979· 2 entries
Received an honorary doctorate from Smith College and moved with Cliff to Montague, MA
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“What Does a Woman Need to Know?”
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1977· 1 entry
Rich became an associate of the Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press (WIFP)
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1976· 1 entry
Rich began her same-sex partnership with Jamaican-born novelist and editor Michelle Cliff, which lasted until her death
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1974· 1 entry
Awarded National Book Award for Diving into the Wreck (1974).
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1971· 2 entries
Awarded Shelley Memorial Award (1971).
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Was the recipient of the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America and spent the next year and a half teaching at Brandeis University as the Hurst visiting professor of creative writing
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1968· 2 entries
Began teaching in the SEEK program in City College of New York, a position she continued until 1975
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Signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War
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1966· 1 entry
Rich became involved with the New Left and became heavily involved in anti-war, civil rights, and feminist activism
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1963· 1 entry
Rich published her third collection, Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law, which was a much more personal work examining her female identity, reflecting the increasing tensions she experienced as a wife and mother in the 1950s
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1960· 1 entry
“Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law”
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1955· 1 entry
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
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1953· 1 entry
Rich married Alfred Haskell Conrad, an economics professor at Harvard University she had met as an undergraduate
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1952· 1 entry
Awarded Guggenheim Fellowship (1952).
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1951· 1 entry
Her senior year at college, Rich's first collection of poetry, A Change of World, was chosen by the poet W
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1929· 1 entry
Born 1929-05-16.
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