The Press remembers poet and feminist theorist Adrienne Rich

By: Emily | Date: March 29, 2012
The Press remembers poet and feminist theorist Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich, a major poet and essayist whose work was instrumental in shaping the women’s movement, passed away on Tuesday at the age of 82. The winner of numerous awards, including the National Book Award, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, and the National Book Critics Circle Award, Rich published more than thirty volumes of poetry and prose throughout her career. Of Rich, The New Yorker writes:
"She was an explorer, ‘diving into the wreck,’ as the title of one of her most famous poems has it, to help us find what is naked and unencumbered in ourselves: ‘the wreck and not the story of the wreck / the thing itself and not the myth.'"
In 1984, the Press published Reading Adrienne Rich: Reviews and Re-Visions, 1951-81, a celebration of Rich’s work that The Women’s Review of Books called “a work of love.” Still available today, it includes essays and reviews by Judith McDaniel, Claire Keyes, W. H. Auden, Margaret Atwood, and Hayden Carruth, among others, and traces the changes in Rich’s poetry and politics over three decades. We continue to celebrate Rich and are grateful for her work and her voice.