Later Poems: Selected and New 1971-2012

by Adrienne Rich

Overview

The final volume of poems assembled by America’s most powerful and distinctive poetic voice.

In Later Poems: Selected and New 1971–2012, the strong trajectory of the work of one of the most important artists of American letters is on display. This volume brings together a remarkable body of work. Included are Adrienne Rich’s own selections from twelve volumes of published works, including the National Book Award–winning Diving Into the Wreck, An Atlas of the Difficult World, and her most recent volume, Tonight No Poetry Will Serve, along with ten powerful new poems, previously uncollected. Among these, “From Strata” is a kind of archaeology of the present day; “Itinerary” searches for an “indefinite future” in a menaced landscape; “For the Young Anarchists” offers a trope of skilled labor for political action; and the haunting voice of “Teethsucking Bird” reminds us of what we have been told to forget. This collection testifies to a monumental career that distinguished American literature in the late twentieth century and will continue to inspire readers for years to come.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393089561
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	11/05/2012
Pages:	544
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.70(d)

About the Author

Adrienne Rich (1929–2012) was an award-winning poet, influential essayist, radical feminist, and major public intellectual of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. She wrote two dozen volumes of poetry, including the National Book Award–winning Diving into the Wreck, and more than a half-dozen of prose.

Editorial Reviews

This big and important selection begins at the point where Rich (who died in March 2012) became a national political figure: Diving into the Wreck (1973), with its often-quoted title poem, became a must-read for 1970s feminists, while The Dream of a Common Language (1977), with its central sequence “Twenty-One Love Poems,” set a new standard for writing on love between women. The long phrases of “Yom Kippur 1984” look back at her Jewish heritage, showing how a writer’s solitude interacts with an activist’s solidarity; An Atlas of the Difficult World (1991) found phrases harsh and mild for American landscapes, especially her adoptive home in California, where the “light of outrage is the light of history,/ springing upon us when we’re least prepared.” Rich could depict calls to action and prophetic near-despair, but her white spaces and broken-up lines, recurring symbols (solitary mammals, lost boats, telescopes) and isolated terms could also portray an inner life as complex as it was committed. Those portrayals resound anew through the 10 new poems, among them an inspiring address “For the Young Anarchists” and the last of her many responses to Wallace Stevens. “What’s concrete for me: from there I cast out further,” she wrote; this inspiring retrospective shows just how much she could take in. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

"She dreamed, famously, of a common language, and that is what she has left us with: language that made what was true, truer; what was small, bigger; what was silent, heard; what was fleeting, eternal."

New York Times Magazine

"“[Rich’s poems] shine with defiance, fierce commitment, introspection and self-reproach, ‘hunger for clarity’ and ‘sour plum jam,’ majestic coastlines and domestic detail. Here is a poet who knew her own contradictions, determined to depict them accurately, and equally determined that she would not write for herself alone."

San Francisco Chronicle - Stephen Burt