A Whorl of Poetry

Index of Authors

A Common Language

Adrienne Rich has written at least the following books:

• Midnight Salvage
• Dark Fields of the Republic
• An Atlas of the Difficult World
• Time's Power
• The Fact of a Doorframe
• A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far
• The Dream of a Common Language
• Twenty-one Love Poems
• Diving into the Wreck
• The Will to Change
• Leaflets
• Necessities of Life
• Snapshots of a Daughter in Law
• The Diamond Cutters
• A Change of World

This apartment full of books could crack open to the thick jaws, the bulging eyes of monsters, easily: Once open the books, you have to face the underside of everything you've loved-- the rack and pincers held in readiness, the gag even the best voices had to mumble through, the silence burying unwanted children-- women, deviants, witnesses--in desert sand. Kenneth tells me he's been arranging his books so he can look at Blake and Kafka while he types; yes; and we still have to reckon with Swift loathing the woman's flesh while praising her mind, Goethe's dread of the Mothers, Claudel vilifying Gide, and the ghosts--their hands clasped for centuries-- of artists dying in childbirth, wise-women charred at the stake, centuries of books unwritten piled behind these shelves; and we still have to stare into the absence of men who would not, women who could not, speak to our life--this still unexcavated hole called civilization, this act of translation, this half-world. -- #5, from "Twenty-one Love Poems," Dream of a Common Language, p. 27.

Links: The Adrienne Rich page at Book Stacks Unlimited contains a short blurb, along with .wav and .ra files of AR reading Miracle Ice Cream. My Mouth Hovers Across Your Breasts and Two Songs are online at the Adrienne Rich page of this love poetry site (Athens/Olympus/2601).

Tattered Kaddish Taurean reaper of the wild apple field messenger from earthmire gleaning transcripts of fog in the nineteenth year and the eleventh month speak your tattered Kaddish for all suicides: Praise to life though it crumbled in like a tunnel on ones we knew and loved Praise to life though its windows blew shut on the breathing-room of ones we knew and loved Praise to life though ones we knew and loved loved it badly, too well, and not enough Praise to life though it tightened like a knot on the hearts of ones we thought we knew loved us Praise to life giving room and reason to ones we knew and loved who felt unpraisable Praise to them, how they loved it, when they could.