Adrienne Rich Twenty One Love Poem free essay sample

Adrienne was known to be one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century,and was credited with bringing the oppression of women and lesbians to the forefront of poetic discourse. Richs poetics depends on a readers experience of her poetry. It is an event of cultural engagement in which the poems, resonating with and against each other, urges the reader to test various hermeneutic and ideological stances, and it requires the dialogic interaction among poet, poem, reader, and cultural context. For these reasons, the reader is indispensable to Richs feminist poetics. I believe the readers are the ones to perceive the personification in her poetry. Through his/her perception the images can be understood or retranslated into several different possibilities. Such freedom conceded to the reader can be interpreted as a demonstration of the persona’s disengagement from a given ideology. The publication of Twenty-One Love Poems in 1976 in effect marked Richs coming out as a lesbian. The rules break like a thermometer,/ quicksilver spills across the charted systems/ were out in a country that has no language/ whatever we do together is pure invention/ the maps they gave us were out of date/ by years , were all things she wrote that pronounced that she was coming out. In 1970 Rich separated from her husband, with whom she had three children. He was subsequently ruled to have killed himself. She was with her partner, the writer Michelle Cliff ,for more than 30 years. (http://www. guardian. co. uk/March292012) The Dream of a Common Language is a collection of poetry that was written by a woman, about women, for women. This book was the first book published after Rich decided to come out about her sexuality in 1976 and the book was first published in 1978. The Dream of a Common Language was poetry for community, poetry meant to exploit purpose, poetry meant to be marked up in the margins, poetry meant sung to someone of significance. The collection is divided into three sections. The first, â€Å"Power,† is about the accomplishments of individual women. The second portion of the book, â€Å"Twenty-one Love Poems,† is the open proclamation of Rich’s sexual preference and Not Somewhere Else, but Here,† where Adrienne Rich is believed to continue her exploration of female relationships. Twenty one love poem is a quatrain, with various stanzas of fourteen or sixteen lines. Its in a sonnet form which was originated in Europe. A sonnet is a signified poem of fourteen lines that follows a strict rhyme scheme and specific structure. Adrienne Rich is known for poetry about social and political commentarty, feminism, social commentary, etc. A collection of Love Poems should certainly be taken in context with lesbian sexuality. In her Twenty-One Love Poems, Adrienne Rich classifies a series of nature images in order to examine the relationship between self and city, self and lover. On all accounts this collection of poems, nature serves as a symbol of psychic life and shock, and it can be difficult to describe the various natural metaphors which Rich uses. One can, however, group these images into categories. To me, the poem is about choice, actions, and how we define love ourselves rather than through destiny, meeting of souls, etc. The poem has some classic existential themes; the opening line: no ones fated or doomed to love anyone says our choices in love are our own. It has an existential theme to it. Looking at the section beginning â€Å"No one has imagined us,† I didn’t identify the â€Å"us† necessarily as female but more generally just as humanity struggling and that their the only one who notice how rough things are, which, incidentally, I think is more powerful left unnamed because it allows the reader to take on the poem for him or herself. Then I read â€Å"live like trees,† which i get the sense it means they want to live naturally, free from the patriarchal oppression, and be able to branch out, take up space in this city. The poet makes reference to the opera Tristand und Isolde (a story about lovers that do confuse death and love, due to a love potion) and makes a point to say that the opera is NOT the story that fate, magic, love potions, etc. , have nothing to do with it. The existential theme is continued when the poet mentions a tape recorder a device that can only record sound, what is actually said and done. In a sense, she is saying that actions are what are important thoughts and intentions are meaningless in death, what remains after we are gone is how we were are seen by others. If our actions define who we are or how we tried to love, the recorded may have caught some ghost of us that recordable actions are what will be remembered after death. She is saying that love is what we say and do, what we choose to act upon by ourselves despite the forces that rage within us and against. I think its also interesting that the poem is directed mainly toward women, not men (especially given the poets background and other poems about sexuality and lesbianism) None the less the poem signifies how homosexuality may have been viewed in the late 1970’s and how homosexuals may have felt during this period, basically hiding in the shadows so they would not be judged. The increasing visibility of gay people generated a backlash during the 1970s. It is perhaps the most discussed anti-gay rights campaign of the decade. Poetry is used to offers a way of distinguishing our need, not for rejecting needs, or even for achieving them.