★★★★★ 3
A few I loved but the rest didn't excite me
Format: Paperback
I got this book because I wasn’t sure that I wanted a book of her complete poems. This one selects from each of her volumes of poetry (she was deceased at the time of its publication). I found that I almost exclusively liked poems from her book Diving into the Wreck, which won the National Book Award. So in the end, I came away from this volume not wanting to read her complete work but wanting to read Diving into the Wreck in its entirety. This pains me somewhat. I think of Adrienne Rich as a feminist ground-breaker and icon. I came away from this realizing I probably like her essays and books tackling how women are treated more than I like her poetry. I sensed in her reserve in her poetry, that she was not wanting to bring us entirely into the impetus of the poem, holding us at a bit of a distance and not being specific. While that isn’t true of all of her poetry, that’s the feel I was getting from much of it.
One thing that struck me is that in this volume, there was little evidence of her voice as an activist. I don’t know if that’s true of her poetry in general or if it’s a result of the editorial choices in this volume. Most of the poetry was very much about relationship, about how people treat each other, whether individuals or groups.
Not a lot of the poetry in this volume stuck with me. I would read it and then it was gone. Out of 400 pages of poetry, I marked only 12 poems. So I was disappointed that I didn’t connect more with Adrienne Rich’s poetry, especially since her poem “Diving into the Wreck” (from the book by the same name) is one of my favorite poems. I guess more evidence that I’m a fan of specific poems more than I’m a fan of poets.
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Reviewed in the United States on April 17, 2025
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