1-9-2000
Adrienne Rich
(1929 - 2012)
Died March 27, 2012
INDEX:
LINKS:
Selected Criticism on Adrienne Rich
The Road Taken: Adrienne Rich in the 1990s – Poem , by Carol Bere
21 Love Poems
The Dream of A Common Language
I
Whenever in this city, screens flicker
with pornography, with science-fiction vampires,
victimized hirelings bending to the lash,
we also have to walk...if simply as we walk
through the rainsoaked garbage, the tabloid cruelties
of our own neighborhoods.
We need to grasp our lives inseparable
from those rancid dreams, that blurt of metal, those disgraces,
and the red begonia perilously flashing
from a tenement still six stories high,
or the long-legged young girls playing ball
in the junior highschool playground.
No one has imagined us. We want to live like trees,
sycamores blazing through the sulfuric air,
dappled with scars, still exuberantly budding,
our animal passion rooted in the city.
II
I wake up in your bed. I know I have been dreaming.
Much earlier, the alarm broke us from each other,
You've been at your desk for hours. I know what I dreamed:
our friend the poet comes into my room
where I've been writing for days,
drafts, carbons, poems are scattered everywhere,
and I want to show her one poem
which is the poem of my life. But I hesitate,
and wake. You've kissed my hair
to wake me. I dreamed you were a poem,
I say, a poem I wanted to show someone...
and I laugh and fall dreaming again
of the desire to show you to everyone I love,
to move openly together
in the pull of gravity, which is not simple,
which carries the feathered grass a long way down the upbreathing air.
See all 21 Love poems here
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You're wondering if I'm lonely:
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CANÇÃO
Se estou só, queres tu saber: Pois bem, sim, estou só, como o avião que voa só e horizontal, fixado no feixe de rádio, e atravessa as Montanhas Rochosas, visando os corredores orlados de azul de um qualquer aeroporto no oceano.
Se estou só, queres perguntar: Bem, é claro, só como uma mulher que atravessa de automóvel o país, dia após dia, deixando atrás de si, milha após milha, cidadezinhas onde podia ter parado e vivido e morrido em solidão.
Se estou só, deve ser a solidão de ser a primeira a despertar, de respirar o primeiro sopro frio da manhã sobre a cidade, de ser a única acordada numa casa envolta em sono.
Se estou só, é com o barco a remos bloqueado na margem pelo gelo na derradeira luz vermelha do ano, e que sabe o que é, que sabe não ser gelo, nem lama, nem luz de Inverno, mas madeira, dotada para arder.
Tradução de João Ferreira Duarte, em "LEITURAS poemas do inglês", Relógio de Água, 1993.
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My three sisters are sitting on rocks of black obsidian. For the first time, in this light, I can see who they are. * My first sister is sewing her costume for the procession. She is going as the Transparent lady and all her nerves will be visible. * My second sister is also sewing, at the seam over her heart which has never healed entirely, At last, she hopes, this tightness in her chest will ease.
My third sister is gazing at a dark-red crust spreading westward far out on the sea. Her stockings are torn but she is beautiful.
1968 |
Donne
Le mie tre sorelle stanno sedute su rocce di nera ossidiana In questa luce, per la prima volta, riesco a vedere chi sono.
La prima sta cucendo il costume per la processione. Si vestirà da Dama Trasparente tutti i nervi allo scoperto.
La seconda sta anche lei cucendo. Quella cucitura sul cuore che non si è mai del tutto cicatrizzata. Cederà alla fine quella tensione nel petto, lei spera.
La terza fissa lo sguardo sulla cresta dell'onda rosso-scura, lontano. Le sue calze sono tutte strappi ma lei è bella. |
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XVI
The Jews I've felt rooted among are those who were turned to smoke
Reading of the chimneys against the blear air I think I have seen them myself
the fog of northern Europe licking its way along the railroad tracks
to the place where all tracks end You told me not to look there
to become a citizen of the world
bound by no tribe or clan yet dying you followed the Six Day War
with desperate attention and this summer I lie awake at dawn
sweating the Middle Eats through ,y brain wearing the star of David
on a thin chain at me breastbone
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Gli ebrei che conoscevo
Gli ebrei tra cui avevo radici sono quelli tramutati in fumo
Leggendo nei camini contro la bruma mi sembra di averli visti io stessa
la nebbia del nord Europa si fa strada lambendo i binari della ferrovia
là dove tutti i binari finiscono Mi dicesti di non guardare
di diventare cittadina del mondo
sciolta da clan o da tribù Neppure morente tu seguivi la Guerra dei Sei Giorni
con disperata attenzione e questa estate io sveglia all'alba
trasudo il Medio Oriente dal cervello porto la stella di Davide
ad una catenina sottile sullo sterno. |
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Tell me something you say Not: What are you working on now, is there anyone special, how is the job do you mind coming back to an empty house what do you do on Sundays Tell me something… Some secret we both know and have never spoken? Some sentence that could flood with light your life, mine? Tell me what daughters tell their mothers everywhere in the world, and I and only I even have to ask… Tell me something. Lately, I hear it: Tell me something true, daughter-in-law before we part, tell me something true before I die And time was when I tried. You married my son, and so strange as you are, you are my daughter Tell me… I’ve been trying to tell you, mother-in-law that I think I’m breaking in two and half doesn’t even want to love I can polish this table to satin because I don’t care I am trying to tell you, I envy the people in mental hospitals their freedom and I can’t live on placebos or Valium, like you A cut lemon scours the smell of fish away You’ll feel better when the children are in school I would try to tell you, mother-in-law but my anger takes fire from yours and in the oven the meal bursts into flames Daughter-in-law, before we part tell me something true I polished the table, mother-in-law and scrubbed the knives with half a lemon the way you showed me to do I wish I could tell you- Tell me They think I’m weak and hold things back from me. I agreed to years ago Daughter-in-law, strange as you are, tell me something true tell me something Your son is dead ten years, I am a lesbian, my children are themselves. Mother-in-law, before we part shall we try again? Strange as I am, strange as you are? What do mothers ask their own daughters, everywhere in the world? Is there a question? Ask me something.
1963 |
Suocera
Dimmi qualcosa Tu dici Non: a che cosa stai lavorando ora, ti interessa qualcuno Come va il lavoro Ti dispiace ritornare in una casa vuota Cosa fai la domenica Dimmi qualcosa.... Un segreto Che entrambe sappiamo e che mai ci siamo dette? Una frase capace di inondare di luce La tua vita, la mia? Dimmi ciò che le figlie dicono alle madri Ovunque nel mondo, e io e solo io Sono costretta a chiedere... Dimmi qualcosa. Da qualche tempo mi sento dire: dimmi qualcosa di vero, nuora cara, prima che ci separiamo, dimmi qualcosa di vero prima che io muoia Ci fù un tempo in cui io tentai. Tu hai sposato mio figlio, e perciò Per quanto strana tu sia, sei mia figlia Dimmi... Ho sempre provato a dirti, suocera cara Che penso che mi sto spezzando in due E metà di me neanche vuole amare più. Posso lucidare questo tavolo come raso perchè non m'importa: Sto provando a dirti, invidio la libertà Di coloro che stanno al manicomino Ma io non posso vivere di placebo E valium, come te Un limone tagliato toglie l'odore del pesce Starai meglio quando i bambini andranno a scuola Volevo provare a dirti, suocera cara Ma la rabbia mi si accende con la tua e nel forno la cena va a fuoco Nuora cara, prima che ci separiamo Dimmi qualcosa di vero Ho lucidato il tavolo suocera cara E strofinato i coltelli con mezzo limone Nel modo in cui mi insegnasti Vorrei potertelo dire Dimmi ! Credono che io sia debole e mi Nascondono le cose. Ho accettato questo anni fa. Nuora cara, per quanto strana tu sia Dimmi qualcosa di vero Dimmi qualcosa Tuo figlio è morto Dieci anni fa, io sono lesbica, i miei figli sono se stessi. Suocera cara, prima di separaci Tenteremo ancora? Per quanto strana io sia, per quanto strana tu sia ? Che cosa chiedono le madri alle figlie, ovunque nel mondo ? C'è una domanda ? Chiedimi qualcosa.
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PROSPECTIVE
IMMIGRANTS
PLEASE NOTE
Either you will
go through this door
or you will not go through.
If you go through
there is always the risk
of remembering your name.
Things look at you doubly
and you must look back
and let them happen.
If you do not go through
it is possible
to live worthily
to maintain your attitudes
to hold your position
to die bravely
but much will blind you,
much will evade you,
at what cost who knows?
The door itself
makes no promises.
It is only a door.
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1.
Sex, as they harshly call it,
I fell into this morning
at ten o'clock, a drizzling hour
of traffic and wet newspapers.
I thought of him who yesterday
clearly didn't
turn me to a hot field
ready for plowing,
and longing for that young man
pierced me to the roots
bathing every vein, etc.
All day he appears to me
touchingly desirable, a prize one could wreck one's peace for.
I'd call it love if love
didn't take so many years
but lust too is a jewel
a sweet flower and what
pure happiness to know
all our high-toned questions
breed in a lively animal.
2.
That "old last act"!
And yet sometimes
all seems post coitum triste
and I a mere bystander.
Somebody else is going off,
getting shot to the moon.
Or a moon-race!
Split seconds after
my opposite number lands
I make it--
we lie fainting together
at a crater-edge
heavy as mercury in our moonsuits
till he speaks--
in a different language
yet one I've picked up
through cultural exchanges...
we murmur the first moonwords:
Spasibo. Thanks. O.K.
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She had thought the studio would keep itself; no dust upon the furniture of love. Half heresy, to wish the taps less vocal, the panes relieved of grime. A plate of pears, a piano with a Persian shawl, a cat stalking the picturesque amusing mouse had risen at his urging. Not that at five each separate star would writhe under the milkman's tramp; that morning light so coldly would delineate the scraps of last night's cheese and three sepulchral bottles; that on the kitchen shelf among the saucers a pair of beetle-eyes would fix her own-- envoy from some village in the moldings... Meanwhile, he, with a yawn, sounded a dozen notes upon the keyboard, declared it out of tune, shrugged at the mirror, rubbed at his beard, went out for cigarettes; while she, jeered by the minor demons, pulled back the sheets and made the bed and found a towel to dust the table-top, and let the coffee-pot boil over on the stove. By evening she was back in love again, though not so wholly but throughout the night she woke sometimes to feel the daylight coming like a relentless milkman up the stairs.
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An Unsaid Word
She who has power to call her man From that estranged intensity Where his mind forages alone, Yet keeps her pace and leaves him free, And when his thoughts to her return Stands where he left her, still his own, Knows this the hardest thing to learn.
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Trying to talk with a man
Out in this desert we are testing bombs,
that's why we came here.
Sometimes I feel an underground river forcing its way between deformed cliffs an acute angle of understanding moving itself like a locus of the sun into this condemned scenery.
What we’ve had to give up to get here – whole LP collections, films we starred in playing in the neighborhoods, bakery windows full of dry, chocolate-filled Jewish cookies, the language of love-letters, of suicide notes, afternoons on the riverbank pretending to be children
Coming out to this desert we meant to change the face of driving among dull green succulents walking at noon in the ghost town surrounded by a silence
that sounds like the silence of the place except that it came with us and is familiar and everything we were saying until now was an effort to blot it out – coming out here we are up against it
Out here I feel more helpless with you than without you You mention the danger and list the equipment we talk of people caring for each other in emergencies - laceration, thirst - but you look at me like an emergency
Your dry heat feels like power your eyes are stars of a different magnitude they reflect lights that spell out: EXIT when you get up and pace the floor
talking of the danger as if it were not ourselves as if we were testing anything else.
1971
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Birds and periodic blood. Old recapitulations. The fox, panting, fire-eyed, gone to earth in my chest. How beautiful we are, she and I, with our auburn pelts, our trails of blood, our miracle escapes, our whiplash panic flogging us on the new miracles! They’ve supplied us with pills for bleeding, pills for panic. Wash them down the sink. This is truth, then: dull needle groping in the spinal fluid, weak acid in the bottom of the cup, foreboding, foreboding. No one tells the truth about truth, that it’s what the fox sees from her scuffled burrow: dull-jawed, onrushing killer, being that inanely single-minded will have our skins at last.
1967
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Pássaros e
sangue periódico.
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Aunt Jennifer's Tigers
Aunt Jennifer's tigers
prance across a screen,
Aunt Jennifer's
fingers fluttering through her wool
When Aunt is dead, her
terrified hands will lie
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OS TIGRES DA TIA JENNIFER
Os tigres da tia Jennifer cruzam uma trama,
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Sources
VII
For years I struggled with you: your categories, your theories, your will, the cruelty which came inextricable from your love. For years all arguments I carried on in my head were with you. I saw myself, the eldest daughter raised as a son, taught to study but not to pray, taught to hold reading and writing sacred: the eldest daughter in a house with no son, she who must overthrow the father, take what he taught her and use it against him. All this in a castle of air, the floating world of the assimilated who know and deny they will always be aliens.
After your death I met you again as the face of patriarchy, could name at last precisely the principle you embodied, there was an ideology at last which let me dispose of you, identify the suffering you caused, hate you righteously as part of a system, the kingdom of the fathers. I saw the power and arrogance of the male as your true watermark; I did not see beneath it the suffering of the Jew, the alien stamp you bore, because you had deliberately arranged that it should be invisible to me. It is only, under a powerful, womanly lens, that I can decipher your suffering and deny no part of my own.
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“FONTES”
Após a tua morte, tornei a encontrar-te no rosto da patriarquia, podia por
fim classificar rigorosamente o princípio que encarnavas, havia por fim
uma ideologia que me permitia arrumar-te, identificar o sofrimento que
provocaste, odiar-te por justa causa como parte de um sistema, o reinado
dos pais. Vi o poder e arrogância do macho como a tua genuína imagem de
marca; não vi por baixo dela o sofrimento do judeu, a insígnia estrangeira
que usavas, já que deliberadamente quiseste que fosse invisível para mim.
Só agora, sob uma lente tremenda, de mulher, consigo decifrar o teu
sofrimento e não negar qualquer parte do meu. |
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Women
My three sisters are sitting on rocks of black obsidian. For the first time, in this light, I can see who they are. * My first sister is sewing her costume for the procession. She is going as the Transparent lady and all her nerves will be visible. * My second sister is also sewing, at the seam over her heart which has never healed entirely, At last, she hopes, this tightness in her chest will ease. * My third sister is gazing at a dark-red crust spreading westward far out on the sea. Her stockings are torn but she is beautiful.
1968
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uma crosta vermelho-escura que a ocidente se estende ao longe [sobre o mar.
Tem as meias rotas mas é formosa. |
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1. The thing that arrests me is how we are composed of molecules (he showed me the figure in the paving stones) arranged without our knowledge and consent like the wirephoto composed of millions of dots
in which the man from Bangladesh walks starving on the front page knowing nothing about it which is his presence for the world
2. We are standing in line outside of something two by two, or alone in pairs, or simply alone looking into windows full of scissors, windows full of shoes. The street was closing, the city was closing, would we be the lucky ones to make it? They were showing in a glass case, the Man Without a Country. We held up our passports in his face, we wept for him.
They are dumping animal blood into the sea to bring up the sharks. Sometimes every aperture of my body leaks blood. I don’t know whether to pretend that this is natural. Is there a law about this, a law of nature? You worship the blood you call it hysterical bleeding you want to drink it like milk you dip your finger into it and you write you faint at the smell of it you dream of dumping me into the sea.
3. The tragedy of sex lies around us, a woodlot the axes are sharpened for. The old shelters and huts stare through the clearing with a certain resolution - the hermit’s cabin, the hunters’ shack – scenes of masturbation and dirty jokes. A man’s world. But finished. They themselves have sold it to the machines. I walk the unconcious forest, A woman dressed in old army fatigues that have shrunk to fit her, I am lost at moments, I feel dazed by the sun pawing between the trees, cold in the bog and lichen of the ticket. Nothing will save this. I am alone, kicking the last totting logs with their strange smell of life, not death, wondering what on earth it all might have become. 4.
Clarity,
spray
blinding and purging
spears of sun striking the water
the bodies riding the air
like gliders
the bodies in slow motion
falling into the pool at the Berlin Olympics
control; loss of control
the bodies rising arching back to the tower time reeling backward
clarity of open air before the dark chambers with the shower-heads
the bodies falling again freely
faster than light the water opening like air like realization
A woman made this film against
the law of gravity
5. All night dreaming of a body space weighs on differently from mine We are making love in the street the traffic flows off from us pouring back like a sheet the asphalt stirs with tenderness there is no dismay we move together like underwater plants
Over and over, starting to wake
But this is the saying of a dream
1971
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DESPERTAR NAS TREVAS
1.
Claridade, 5. |
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I know you are reading this poem From An Atlas of the Difficult World XIII
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| As traduções para Português (excepto "Canção") são de Margarida Vale de Gato, que gentilmente autorizou a sua transcrição aqui. |
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THE ART OF TRANSLATION
1
To have seen you
exactly, once:
to wing it back to
my country bearing
that was a mission,
surely: my art's pouch
2
It's only a branch
like any other
broken between us,
broken despite us
3
But say we're
crouching on the ground like children
Say I saw the
earring first but you wanted it.
I would look long
at the beach glass and the sharded self
Like a thief I
would deny the words, deny they ever
4
The trade names
follow trade
That the books are
for personal use
1995
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The poet reads
this poem, here
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1979 |
The School Among the RuinsBeirut.Baghdad.Sarajevo.Bethlehem.Kabul. Not of course here.
1.
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Published: 18 March 2014
by Adrienne Rich; introduced by James Crews
When Adrienne Rich published her third collection of poems,Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Lawin 1963, the book was met with scathing criticism. Her first, A Change of World(1951), had been selected by W. H. Auden for the Yale Younger Poets Award, and The Diamond Cutters, and Other Poems (1955) had been praised for its attention to formalism and tradition. Snapshots marked a shift in subject matter for Rich as she turned more towards the autobiographical and began to examine the changing roles of women in 1950s and 60s America. In “Split at the Root: An essay on Jewish identity” (1982), Rich reflected on the harsh reviews: “I was seen as ‘bitter’ and ‘personal’; and to be personal was to be disqualified . . . . I didn’t attempt that kind of thing again for a long time”. Moving with her husband and their children to New York City led to her involvement with the anti-Vietnam, Civil Rights and feminist movements which would further electrify her work. Her marriage fell apart, and two years after beginning a lifelong relationship with the novelist Michelle Cliff, Rich published The Dream of a Common Language (1978), a collection of poems in which she openly explored her sexuality for the first time.
Rich went on to write more than twenty volumes of poetry as well as several works of nonfiction, including the feminist classics, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as experience and institution (1976) and On Lies, Secrets and Silence (1979). She attracted international attention when she turned down the National Medal of Arts: “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 . . . . [Art] means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of the power which holds it hostage”.
“The Prospect”, published a decade before Rich’s embrace of free verse, seems to suggest a threat. The poem’s speaker is anxious at first to escape her city rooms with her lover, to “be gone / When next the telephone breaks the waiting air”. It is unclear from whom or what they are running. Images of a calm new life on a mythical coast where, “seas of light / Dip past the golden rocks”, are undermined by the hyperbolic language and exacting rhymes used to describe them. The speaker finally confesses: “I sometimes dread / The promise of that honey-breeding air”. There are echoes here of the fierce realism Rich would come to espouse, seeing in constant longing a dangerous separation from the world. For, only when we are “eating the rind of fact” can we be truly engaged in each moment.
The Prospect
You
promise me when certain things are done
We’ll close these rooms above a city square,
And stealing out by half-light, will be gone
When next the telephone breaks the waiting air,
Before they send to find us, we shall be
Aboard a blunt-nosed steamer, at whose rail
We’ll watch the loading of the last brown bale
And feel the channel roughening the sea.
And after many
sunlit days we’ll sight
The coast you told me of. Along that shore
Rare shells lie tumbled, and the seas of light
Dip past the golden rocks to crash and pour
Upon the bowl-shaped beach. In that clear bay
We’ll scoop for pebbles till our feet and hands
Are gilded by the wash of blending sands;
And though the boat lifts anchor, we shall stay.
You will
discover in the woods beyond
The creatures you have loved on Chinese silk:
The shell-gray fox, gazelles that at your sound
Will lift their eyes as calm as golden milk.
The leaves and grasses feathered into plumes
Will shadow-edge their fine calligraphy;
And in the evening you will come to me.
To tell of honey thick in silver combs.
Yet in the
length of moments unendeared
By sameness, when the cracks of morning show
Only a replica of days we’ve marred,
With still the same old penances to do;
In furnished rooms above a city square,
Eating the rind of fact, I sometimes dread
The promise of that honey-breeding air,
Those unapportioned clusters overhead.
Adrienne Rich (1953)
| PAPER | DATE | AUTHOR | TITLE |
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The Washington Post |
16-5-1999 |
Robert Hass |
One poem by Adrienne Rich |
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The Guardian |
15-6-2002 |
John O'Mahoney |
Poet and Pioneer |
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The Jerusalem Post |
7-2-2005 |
Idra Novey |
What the future holds |
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S F Gate |
29-3-2005 |
Heidi Benson |
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Seattle Weekly |
4-2-1999 |
Judy Lightfoot |
At 70, Adrienne Rich has just written..... |
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Read these articles, here