Collected Poems

Starred review from May 15, 2016

Over the six decades of her writing career, Rich (1929-2012) published a new collection nearly every four years, yet the size of this anthology is surprising for not only its quantity but also for the unflagging quality of its craft and vision. An outspoken feminist and political activist, Rich refused to compromise or silence herself in "the purposeless exchange/ of consciousness for the absence/ of pain," and though her poems often begin with granular, personal observations ("There's a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill"), they unfold into complex maps of wider awareness and realization ("this is not somewhere else but here,/ our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,/ its own ways of making people disappear.") Tensions between private and public, between acceptance and resistance, sparked the dynamic that challenged both her own and her readers' assumptions about their lives and responsibilities. VERDICT An "accurate dreamer" who voiced "her own inward scream," Rich is an indispensable poet, whose work parallels and brings into focus the transformative zeitgeist of her era. This magisterial compendium forcefully suggests that era has not yet passed. [See Prepub Alert, 12/7/15.]--Fred Muratori, Cornell Univ. Lib., Ithaca, NY

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