An Atlas Of The Difficult World Poems 1988 1991

Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. In this, her thirteenth book of verse, the author of "The Dream of a Common Language" and "Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law" writes of war, oppression, the future, death, mystery, love and the magic of poetry.

"Adrienne Rich's poetry has long engaged critics in questions about the nature of poetic art, the character of poetic tradition, and the value of poetry as a political and cultural activity. At the same time, it has attracted many general readers, largely because it expresses the personal, social, and intellectual crises faced by feminists during the last thirty years." "In this study, Alice Templeton looks at the ways in which feminist thinking has influenced Rich's poetics while, simultaneously, her poetic practice has shaped her feminist conceptions. Templeton begins by exploring the tensions between epic, eulogistic, and lyric claims made in the poems collected in Diving into the Wreck (1973). She then examines the strategies Rich uses in subsequent collections to test and refine her feminist thinking. Templeton focuses, in particular, on the "dialogic moments" of cultural participation that Rich's poetry provides for the poet and the reader. These "moments," Templeton argues, can dispel myths of social determinism even as they implicate readers in an ethically charged communal bond." "By demonstrating the contributions that Rich has made both to feminist thinking and to our ways of reading poetic tradition, The Dream and the Dialogue treats Rich as a poet of ideas and places her work solidly in the context of contemporary literary theory."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

One a lyric "confessional" poet and essayist, the other a jazz "spoken-word" performance artist, Adrienne Rich and Jayne Cortez were American feminist superheroes who produced extensive bodies of poetic work that reveal strangely overlapping visions, but in radically different voices and poetic styles. This book reconsiders the poetry activism of Cortez and Rich side-by-side, engaging poetics theory, cultural studies, and popular media in its literary analyses. A collection of eight integrated chapters by multiple poetry critics, as well as an artist-statement narrative by Wonder Woman sculptor Linda Stein, the book focuses upon the voice of bravado, the various calls for global justice, and Third Wave feminist "intersectional" critiques all embodied within these two women's poetic texts. The book also examines the twentieth-century figure of the American superhero, particularly Wonder Woman, bringing popular-culture studies into conversation with literary criticism, as well as visual art through the inclusion of Stein's commentary and illustrations. This beautiful and compelling book experiments with the festschrift concept by inviting multiple and competing disciplinary views on U.S. feminist poetics, women's art and aesthetics, racial and sexual identities, as well as politics and performance—all in tribute to the power of poetry by Cortez and Rich.

This book features a collection of essays on some of the key poets of post-war America, written by leading scholars in the field. All the essays have been newly commissioned to take account of the diverse movements in American poetry since 1945, and also to reflect, retrospectively, on some of the major talents that have shaped its development. In the aftermath of the Second World War, American poets took stock of their own tumultuous past but faced the future with radically new artistic ideals and commitments. More than ever before, American poetry spoke with its own distinctive accents and declared its own dreams and desires. This is the era of confessionalism, beat poetry, protest poetry, and avant-garde postmodernism. This book explores the work of John Berryman, Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, Adrienne Rich, and Sylvia Plath, as well as contemporary African American poets and new poetic voices emerging in the 21st century. This New Casebook introduces the major American poets of the post-war generation, evaluates their achievements in the light of changing critical opinion, and offers lively, incisive readings of some of the most challenging and enthralling poetry of the modern era.

In her six-decade long writing career Adrienne Rich (1929–2012) addressed, with sagacity and probing honesty, most of the significant issues of her lifetime. A poet of finely tuned craft, she won numerous prizes, awards, and honorary degrees, and famously rejected the prestigious National Medal for the Arts in 1997. She wrote twenty-five volumes of poetry and seven non-fiction books as she combined the roles of poet, scholar, theorist, and activist. Rich wrote passionately and powerfully about major 20th and early 21st century concerns such as feminism, racism, sexism, the Vietnam War, Marxism, militarism, the growing income disparities in the U.S., and other social issues. Her works ask important questions about how we should act, and what we should believe. They imagine new ways to deal with the social and political challenges of the twentieth century. Setting her work in the context of her life and American politics and culture during her lifetime, this book explores Rich’s poetic and personal journey from conservative, dutiful follower of cultural and poetic traditions to challenging questioner and critic, from passivity and powerlessness to activist, theorist, and acclaimed “poet of the oppositional imagination.”

The final volume of poems by America’s most powerful and distinctive poetic voice. Later Poems: Selected and New brings together a remarkable body of work by the celebrated poet. Included are Adrienne Rich’s own selections from twelve volumes of published works, including the National Book Award–winning Diving into the Wreck, An Atlas of the Difficult World, and her final volume, Tonight No Poetry Will Serve, along with ten powerful new poems, previously uncollected. This collection testifies to a monumental career that distinguished American literature in the late twentieth century, and will continue to inspire readers for years to come.

The variety of contemporary American poetry leaves many readers overwhelmed. The critic, scholar, and poet Stephen Burt sets out to help. Beginning in the early 1980s, where critical consensus ends, he presents 60 poems, each with an original essay explaining how the poem works, why it matters, and how it speaks to other parts of art and culture.