March 29: Peace, Adrienne

I checked Google news this morning, as I do every morning.  I was greeted with the news that the poet Adrienne Rich had died.  For decades, Rich has been the cutting edge, the voice of the voiceless, the champion of reason and humanity.  Her death has silenced one of the great figures of American letters and thought.

Therefore, I step away from my normal, self-centered blog post to honor the memory of Adrienne Rich with her own words.

Peace, Adrienne.  Peace.

A Valediction Forbidding Mourning

by:  Adrienne Rich

My swirling wants. Your frozen lips.
The grammar turned and attacked me.
Themes, written under duress.
Emptiness of the notations.

They gave me a drug that slowed the healing of wounds.
I want you to see this before I leave:
the experience of repetition as death
the failure of criticism to locate the pain
the poster in the bus that said:
my bleeding is under control

A red plant in a cemetary of plastic wreaths.

A last attempt: the language is a dialect called metaphor.
These images go unglossed: hair, glacier, flashlight.
When I think of a landscape I am thinking of a time.
When I talk of taking a trip I mean forever.
I could say: those mountains have a meaning
but further than that I could not say.

To do something very common, in my own way.



One of the greats