Essays on Adrienne Rich

            Adrienne Rich, in her article “Taking Women Students Seriously,” writes about “women as students and students as women” (Rich).  Her article begins with an anecdote about her own life and being a woman student.  She notes, excitedly, that she went to Radcliffe with the knowledge that she would soon have many great men as…

The poem “Living in Sin” by Adrienne Rich depicts a woman’s recounting of her short but emotionally exhausting affair with the milkman in the early morning, seemingly after her husband has left for work. Rich’s meticulous portrayal of the events in the poem enables readers to comprehend the level of anguish and bewilderment that accompany…

The work of Adrienne Rich is varied but substantial. Her career began with a proper and young female poet writing about the acceptance of certain traditions associated with the divisions of power according to sex and evolved into the radical lesbian feminist fighting for political and social change. Since Rich began writing in the late…

Stevie Smith’s “Not Waving but Drowning” and Adrienne Rich’s “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers” are similar in that both poems’ characters have lived their lives with regret and sorrow. Neither of their lives were lived to the fullest and as death approaches, the question of, “what could have been?” remains forever unanswered. Upon first reading, Stevie Smith’s…

Adrienne Rich’s essay “Split at the Root: An Essay on Jewish Identity” explores her personal journey as a mixed Jewish-Gentile individual in a predominantly non-Jewish society. She discusses the pressure to hide one’s true identity and conform to societal norms, focusing on how religion, ethnicity, and social characteristics are used as means of suppression. Rich…

Revision is a type of evolution. For Adrienne Richs life and poems this is true. Three of her poems, Aunt Jennifers Tigers, Snapshots of a Daughter-In-Law, and Planetarium were written at different spans of her life. Each poem is reflective of the era of its conception. The poems evolve as Richs education and culture change….

Adrienne Rich, a renowned confessional poet, uses a unique structural style in her poem, Storm Warnings, to reveal both literal and metaphorical meanings. The poem’s structure mirrors the external storm occurring outside and allows the speaker to explore her internal conflict in an organized manner. As the speaker becomes aware of the approaching storm, she…

Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers, by Adrienne Rich, is about a woman struggling to deal with her oppressive and constrained lifestyle, and as a way of expressing and freeing herself, she turns to sewing memorable works of art. This is not the poet, Adrienne Riche, first poem that deals with issues women face. She felt dominated by…

In her essay “Taking Women Students Seriously,” Adrienne Rich discusses the historical struggle for gender equality. While it may seem that there has been progress in achieving gender equality, with men taking on more household responsibilities and women pursuing careers outside of the home, this perception might not accurately reflect the reality. Despite ambitious women…

Adrienne Rich was an American poet, essayist, and feminist. She was called one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century, by one of her many admirers Cary Nelson, in the Anthology of Modern American Poetry. She was born into an era in which women were looked…