Rich pulls you into the depth of her sorrow like no one else I know. Beautiful and pure. Like all great poetry she should be read out loud. She was read in a park, in the car and home alone and every time she would bring me to that place that I needed to be. Which is exactly what poetry is for. I wouldn't suggest reading her on a daily basis. Such a plan would send you down the spiral of depression and hopelessness never to be seen again. and for the Texan: I don't how anyone could make a poem a...

You know, it's always difficult to check the box on a book of poetry that says that I "read" it. Can you ever really say that you're "done" with a poet like Adrienne Rich?I come back to this collection often for how clever it is--sharp words about soft subjects, like love and longing. My favorite poem of hers will always be "Storm Warnings," which you should Google on a rainy day.Focused on the 1970s--"Diving into the Wreck" may have given me an epigraph for my thesis! Unbelievably good.

Utterly compelling: both heartbreaking and uplifting, Rich delivers a punch to the stomach with every poem. Starting from her early, careful poems to the later, experimental works, this book is a snapshot of one of the worlds greatest poets. I'm ashamed I hadn't read her before. I can't ever imagine being 'finished' with this book. Some of my favourites are the '21 love poems' and the deceptively simple nature poems, such as For an Anniversary. Thank you, Carol, because without your kind suggest...

Adrienne Rich’s poetry is complex, politically charged, and often openly mysterious. There is a distance in her words, a separation that asks for her readers to dig deeper in order to understand each piece thoroughly. The poems collected in this book span from 1950-2001, it encapsulates much of the vast history which occurred during this time frame. Rich’s words are filled with deep metaphors as well as open defiance, her writing so utterly intelligent that it often comes across as overly calcul...

The Development Of A Feminist Poet"Adrienne Rich (b. 1929) has developed into one of the United States' best known poets. She won the National Book Award in 1974 and received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1994. Her book, "The Fact of a Doorframe" consists of a selection she has made from her first nine volumes of poetry written between 1950 and 1983. In 2002, shortly after I read this book and wrote this review, "The Fact of a Doorframe" was revised to add both a new introduction and also additional...

not sold on these poems yet; am reading them primarily for the ghazals. the length of the lines seems too long, too meandering. there are too many abstractions. too many prescriptions for "the truth." i feel as if i'm being lectured to. we are all just people. perhaps it's because so many of these are responses to Ghalib's ghazals. i find no comfort in prophets. i don't believe them. that being said, there are wee bright spots, unique phrases amongs the familiar tropes. i have a friend who would...

This is a strong introduction to Rich's early and middle period work. Her themes and focus morph each decade, her early formalism gives way to experimentalism. Her early focuses on the natural world and unhappy domestic life give way to her political and linguistic explorations of the 1970s and early 1980s. Her love of the natural world shifts into indignation at its destruction, and her political and feminist concerns become more and more dominant. An important and engaging collection.

I wish I felt I could give this a higher rating, because she's such an influential poet, but ultimately her poems were just too esoteric for me. I can handle a little interpretation, but there were large swathes of the collection that I could make nothing of. But what was in there that I could understand, I loved, particularly her poetry from the mid-seventies to early nineties, which probably was the best in the book. I might seek out the original books that these poems were taken from.

Some amazing poems throughout this collection, especially the early and mid-period work. During those years Rich executed a wonderful balancing act on the ole personal-political axis. Her later poems became more stridently political and while I was sympathetic to their messages, the didactic words often fell flat and occasionally slid right off the page.

Favorite poems--- first deals with the tension between reality and expectations in romantic relationships (that are not marriage), second, with sex.Living in SinShe 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 catstalking the picturesque amusing mousehad risen at his urging.Not that at five each separate stair would writheunder the milkman's tramp;...

I saw Adrienne Rich in Santa Cruz this past Saturday, at a reading of the poetry of Robinson Jeffers. She sat throughout, in a red chair with a lilac pillow, in front of the stage. Her hands trembled when she read, breaking my heart a bit, and she asked, polite though imperiously, for more light. I'd never have dreamed to imagine her frail.

Little fragments and pieces of her poems caught the light for me. I'm not very patient for long poems sometimes. But lines like this get that almost nonverbal quality, that necessity: what are we coming to what wants these things of us who wants them (from Leaflets, 1968, p. 102)

i once heard ms. rich read aloud - i made the mistake of asking her to please sign my book with her middle name, which in hindsight was terribly arrogant of me. she didn't. this collection is her best.

Rich is an inspiring poet. Her forms are very intriguing. The book offers a wide selection of her work, and allows the reader to see an incredible progression in imagery to sound to composition. Rich forges new paths of thought and connection within the poems collected in this book.

rich isn't my favorite poet. she's good but tries too hard sometimes to be a poet (especially a political poet).

okay really. huge influence. i've read every drop written by her.

Adrienne Rich is probably the pre-eminent feminist writer-poet of her generation -- excellent poetry in form and construction, and excruciatingly precise conviction and delivery.

In this book the reader can witness the evolution of the work of a master poet. Not to be missed.

snooze

Maybe I picked the wrong time to read this anthology, or maybe the poems simply did not speak to me... It is frustrating to sense that I was missing out on what are indubitably technically accomplished poems with more than their fair share of thought-provoking titles -The Fact of a Doorframe, Letter from the Land of Sinners, A Woman Mourned by Daughters, The Roofwalker, Prospective Immigrants Please Note, The Photograph of the Unmade Bed, The Phenomology of Anger, The Ninth Symphony of Beethoven...

These poems are some of the first poems I was taught at Columbia College and I remember when Adrienne Rich came to read there, and how excited our professors were, but I didn’t yet understand the significance of her work and was so young. It was a remarkable event to hear her read. When I look these poems I notice a real attention to sound and formality in the beginning. And as she grows into her voice, I see a dramatic change in the philosophy of the poems and subject matter over the next few b...

“No one knows what may happen // though the books tell everything.” “There are books that describe all this// and they are useless.” Language and truth is one of the fascinating tensions Rich attempts to uncover through poetry. In many of her poems, Rich shows the many ways in which we should question semantics. Words are our attempt at bridging the gaps of human subjectivity. Yet, language plunges us yet deeper into this exact sense of subjectivity. "What kind of beast would turn its life into

I read somewhere that the problem with poetry is that people tend to read it when they’re depressed. Poetry is an expression of joy and should be shared when one is open to experience the wonder of life. Well, that’s not going to happen. So, here I go again, this time reading Adrienne Rich and her revised THE FACT OF A DOORFRAME: POEMS SELECTED AND NEW, 1950-2001. She opens the updated collection with a short introduction on her introduction to poetry, from the regional voices of her relatives t...

I especially liked some of the compound nouns she created and how she sometimes took cliches and tweaked them to keep us guessing. I read the 1950-2001 edition. There are some snippets which I noted down because they were really beautiful: '...the river fog will do for privacy...''...star dragged heavens, embroidered saddle bags...''...hamlets of half-truth...''...meadowgrass and vetch...''...husks in the cellar...''...translucent curtain, sheet of water...''...the mother of reparations...'

It is ridiculous to claim a favorite poet, but if I had to, she is that poet. I love Adrienne Rich, and I adore this collection I have marked up & highlighted in agreement and awe all throughout this book. So good.

"This is a seasick way,this almost/never touching, thisdrawing-off, this to-and-fro.Subtlety stalks in your eyes,your tongue knows what it knows.I want your secrets—I will have them out.Seasick, I drop into the sea."

Meh. I've studied far better.

Rich's poetry is political, personal, powerful, and progressive. This collection is particularly interesting, because it includes poems from several books spanning over 50 years of Rich's career--one can truly travel with her through time, through her proto-feminist writings of the early 1950s, through the Vietnam War and Rich's reactions, to the continued racism, sexism, and classism of the 1980s and beyond. Rich tackles social justice in the US with deep insight and accessibility, refusing to

My favorite poet- if you have never read her poetry start out with "Living in Sin" or "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning" (also, you should read Donne's poem with it since it is a response to his)... Rich's language is so beautiful and poignant, and rich with meaning (no pun intended haha) you won't be able to stop reading her poetry. Her poem topics range from personal experiences and battling with her sexuality to world issues. A must read.

I love the through-lines of language and gender, but wow I kind of forgot that I find Rich difficult to interact with sometimes. There can be brief lines of truly striking prose, but it can also be incredibly dense. In the poems from Poems: 1982-1983 you can see her starting to engage more with race and her privilege as a white woman, but it feels very introductory. I haven't read her post-1980s work to know how she works through it.