A Woman's Love: A Look at the Poetry of Adrienne Rich

"...Don't ask how I began to love men Don't ask how I began to love woman" (Rich, Dark Fields of the Republic: Poems 1991-1995 64). That one line shows, for me, the meaning of Adrienne Rich's poetry. Rich has put all of her heart, soul, and mind into her poetry. She shows one woman's journey through life, love, and heartache.

In Aunt Jennifer's Tigers, Rich shows how Aunt Jennifer has the courage and strength to live in a male dominated society and an abusive relationship. The tigers "prancing, proud and unafraid" represent Aunt Jennifer's spirit in the face of living "with ordeals she was mastered by" (Rich, Norton Introduction to Literature 628). This is one of Rich's earliest poems, written in 1951, on a woman's place in life and how they lived under the influences of their husbands.

In 1964, Rich wrote "lust... is a jewel a sweet flower and what pure happiness to know all our high-toned questions breed in a lively animal" (Two Songs 720). This shows how lust can change a woman's viewpoint on men and society. In Aunt Jennifer's Tigers, Aunt Jennifer was totally subservient to her husband. Her only outlet being the tigers. Now, Two Songs is showing how a woman's sexuality can be her own, can lead her to the understanding that she can be her own person, and that woman are precious creatures to be treasured. Also, in the second song, Rich shows her beginning indifference to her sexual relations involving men. She fells it is a "moon-race" and she is a "mere bystander" (Two Songs 720). She also says that "he speaks in a different language", and though she's "picked up" the language "through culture exchange", it is still a foreign language (Two Songs 720).

And though she has felt an indifference towards men, her feelings for woman are just starting to come into focus. In 1976, she wrote Twenty-one Love Poems. In which she writes "Whatever happens to us, your body will haunt mine - tender, delicate your lovemaking, ... The live, insatiate dance of your nipples in my mouth- your touch on me, firm, protective, searching me out, your strong tongue and slender fingers reaching where I have been waiting years for you in my rose-wet cave" (Rich, The Floating Poem, Unnumbered 32). When Rich says "Two women together is a work nothing in civilization has made simple, two people together is a work heroic in its ordinariness" (XIX 34), she is showing how loving in general, and women in particular, is hard work. She's showing civilization's unacceptance of two women falling in love, acting on the love in a sexual way, and how they have to fight for any kind of acceptance. Rich shows how hard it is to live with the secret "dreaming ... of the desire to show you to everyone I love, to move openly together" (II 25). In 1976, when this poem was written, gays, lesbians, and bisexuals lived in fear of social ostracism, ridicule, loss of jobs, injury, and in some cases loss of life. Rich's poems reflects the joy and pain of being a lesbian during that time. And in some ways, those same problems are here today to a lesser degree.

In That Mouth, she continues the same lesbian theme, but on a more physical level. Rich writes "These are the lips, powerful rudders pushing through groves of kelp, the girl's terrible, unsweetened taste of the whole ocean, its fathoms: this is that taste" (Rich, An Atlas of a Difficult World: Poems 1988 - 1991 30). Rich is using an ocean metaphor for describing how a woman tastes. She also finishes this poem with "Are you a daughter, are you a son? Strange trade-offs have long been made" (Rich, An Atlas of a Difficult World: Poems 1988 - 1991 30), again mentioning the difficulties of loving the same gender.

In an essay from 1977, Rich writes "A concerted attack is now being waged against homosexuality, by the church, by the media, by all the forces in this country that need a scapegoat to divert attention from racism, poverty, unemployment, and utter, obscene corruption in public life (On Lies, Secrets, and Silence 223). This shows just how many difficulties lesbians, gays, and bisexuals face because they are "two lovers of the same gender" (Rich, Twenty-one Love Poems, XII 31).

Rich sums they way I fell about her poetry and my bisexuality with the line, "When shall we learn, what should be clear as day, We cannot choose what we are free to love" (Dark Fields of the Republic: Poems 1991-1995, Four: History 65).

Works Cited

Beaty, Jerome and Hunter, J. Paul, eds. The Norton Introduction To Literature-Shorter Seventh Edition, New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc, 1998

Rich, Adrienne. An Atlas of the Difficult World: Poems, 1988 - 1991. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. © 1991

Rich, Adrienne. Dark Fields of the Republic: Poems 1991 - 1995. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. © 1995

Rich, Adrienne. Twenty-one Love Poems. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. © 1978