Adrienne Rich (born May 16, 1929 in Baltimore, Maryland) is an American poet, essayist, and feminist. If you hold the copyright to an image (e. ... is the 136th day of the year (137th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1929 (MCMXXIX) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Baltimore redirects here. ... Official language(s) None (English, de facto) Capital Annapolis Largest city Baltimore Largest metro area Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area Area  Ranked 42nd  - Total 12,407 sq mi (32,133 km²)  - Width 101 miles (145 km)  - Length 249 miles (400 km)  - % water 21  - Latitude 37° 53′ N to 39° 43′ N... Feminism is a social theory and political movement primarily informed and motivated by the experience of women. ...

Career

In 1951, the year she graduated from Radcliffe College, Adrienne Rich received the Yale Series of Younger Poets prize, which led to the publication of her first book, A Change of Woman. The contest judge for that year, poet W.H. Auden, wrote an introduction to this volume. The following year, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship and traveled to Europe, then married Harvard University economist Alfred H. Conrad in 1953. Ten years later, she published her second volume, The Diamond Cutters, yet it wasn't until her third volume, Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law, which appeared in 1963, that she gained national prominence. Radcliffe College was a liberal arts womens college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, closely associated with Harvard University. ... The Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition is an annual event of Yale University Press aiming to publish the first collection of a promising American poet. ... Christopher Isherwood and W.H. Auden, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1939 Wystan Hugh Auden (February 21, 1907–September 29, 1973) was an English poet. ... The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation was founded in 1925 by Mr. ... Harvard redirects here. ... Alan Greenspan, former chairman, United States Federal Reserve. ... // March 16: Authorities in Saudi Arabia arrested and jailed poet Abdul Mohsen Musalam and fired a newspaper editor following the publication of Musalams poem The Corrupt on Earth that criticized the states Islamic judiciary. ...

In 1901, she moved with her family, which now included ten to [New York City]], and became increasingly involved in the sociopolitical activism of the day. Her husband took a teaching position at City College of New York. In 1968, Adrienne also began teaching for the college as part of the SEEK writing, she also maintained the position of lecturer and adjunct professor at both Swarthmore College and Columbia University School of the Arts. Rich stayed on to teach in the basic writing program at CUNY as directed by Mina Shaughnessy through the early 1970s. Much of her interest in teaching basic writing, as with her poetry at the time, was in the colliding political and social worlds at CUNY with open enrollment program. Her books from this period, Necessities of Life (1966), Leaflets (1969), and Will to Change (1971), reflect an evolving, expanding sense of poetic form and social engagement. In 1969, she became estranged from her husband, who committed suicide the following year. Rich became active in the women's liberation movement from this point forward. In 1974, her collection Diving Into the Wreck received the National Book Award for Poetry; Rich, however, refused the award individually, instead joining with two other female poets to accept it on behalf of all silenced women. The National Book Awards is one of the most preeminent literary prizes in the United States. ...

Rich's radical feminist position crystallized in her self-declaration as a lesbian, in 1976, the year she published her controversial but groundbreaking volume Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution; the pamphlet Twenty-One Love Poems (1977), which was incorporated into the following year's Dream of a Common Language (1978), marks the first direct treatment of lesbian desire and sexuality in her work. The subsequent A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far (1981) and some of the late poems in The Fact of a Doorframe (2001) represent the capstone of this philosophical and political position. During this period, Rich also wrote a number of important essays, including "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence," some of which were republished in On Lies, Secrets and Silence: Selected Prose, 1966-1978 (1979).

Rich's poetry of the 1980s and 1990s cast a broader net, once again exploring the themes of the late 1960s and early 1970s, but with greater acuteness and range. The award-winning volume An Atlas of the Difficult World (1991) and Dark Fields of the Republic (1995) in particular map out discursive spaces engaging private and public histories, and offer powerful examples of ethically engaged, socially committed lyric poetry.

Rich refused the National Medal of Arts in 1997 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." Another quote from the same speech outlines her view of poetry: "[Art] means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of the power which holds it hostage." The National Medal of Arts is an award and title bestowed on selected honorees by the National Endowment for the Arts. ... For the band, see 1997 (band). ...

As of 1999, Rich was living in Santa Cruz, California, with her partner, novelist, poet and academic Michelle Cliff. The two have been living together since 1976.^[1] For other uses, see Santa Cruz. ... Michelle Cliff (1946 - ) is a Jamaican-American author whose notable works include No Telephone To Heaven, Abeng, and Free Enterprise. ...

In February of 2003, Rich, along with other poets, in protest of the Iraq War, refused to attend a White House symposium on "Poetry and the American Voice."^[2] Year 2003 (MMIII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... For other uses, see Iraq war (disambiguation). ...

Among her many awards are the inaugural, 1986 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the 1992 Poets' Prize, the 1997 Wallace Stevens Award of the Academy of American Poets, the 2004 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry for School Among the Ruins, and the 2006 National Book Foundation (presenter of the National Book Awards) "Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters".^[3] The Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize is awarded annually by The Poetry Foundation; the Foundation also publishes Poetry. ... The Poets Prize is awarded annually for the best book of verse published by an American in the previous calendar year. ... The Wallace Stevens Award is a major annual American literary award for mastery of poetry in the English language. ... The Academy of American Poets is the largest organization in the United States dedicated to the art of poetry. ... The National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) is an American association of approximately seven hundred book reviewers. ... The National Book Foundation, founded 1988, is a non-profit American literary foundation established to raise the cultural appreciation of great writing in America. ... National Book Awards are annual literary awards presented since 1950 for the best American book published in the preceding year, presently in each of four categories: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and young peoples literature. ...

References

is the 25th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era in the 21st century. ...

See also

• Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence

Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence written in 1980, was published in Adrienne Richs 1986 book Blood, Bread, and Poetry. ...

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Adrienne Rich

• Adrienne Rich's lecture agent
• Academy of American Poets Page
• Groundbreaking Books: Diving Into the Wreck
• Adrienne Rich spanish poems.
• Complete text of Rich's letter of refusal for the National Medal for the Arts, 1997
• Excerpts of Rich's letter of refusal for the National Medal for the Arts, and a poem
• Audio interview of Adrienne Rich, 1987, by Don Swaim of CBS Radio, RealAudio at Wired for Books.
• A rich life. Adrienne Rich on poetry, politics, and personal revelation - interview by Michael Klein, The Boston Phoenix, 1999.
• Biography and links to poems
• Modern American Poets page
• Audio recordings at PennSound
• Legislators of the world essay from November 18, 2006 ed. of The Guardian, with the subtitle: "In our dark times we need poetry more than ever, argues Adrienne Rich"