Adrienne Rich, 1929-2012

She was probably the most honest person I ever enjoyed some tiny acquaintance with. That's the same as saying that for me she embodied courage.

The New York Times obituary by Margalit Fox does some justice to a woman both poet and prophet.

Art, Ms. Rich added, “means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of power which holds it hostage.”

Of Rich's poems, I always come back to this:

I

When my dreams showed signs
of becoming
politically correct
no unruly images
escaping beyond border
when walking in the street I found my
themes cut out for me
knew what I would not report
for fear of enemies' usage
then I began to wonder

II
Everything we write
will be used against us
or against those we love.
These are the terms,
take them or leave them.
Poetry never stood a chance
of standing outside history.
One line typed twenty years ago
can be blazed on a wall in spraypaint
glorify art as detachment
or torture of those we
did not love but also
did not want to kill

We move but our words stand
become responsible
and this is verbal privilege

Your Native Land, Your Life.

Again from Margalit Fox:

What she and her sisters-in-arms were fighting to achieve, she said, was simply this: “the creation of a society without domination.”