Essential Essays

April 16, 2018
This vibrant collection of prose pieces by the late poet Rich (1929–2012), edited by Gilbert (Reading and Writing Cancer), spans much of Rich’s career, from 1964 to 2009, and encompasses her ideas on art, motherhood, and politics—and the relationship between them. Topics also include the literary: Rich writes eloquently, for example, about Charlotte Brontë, Emily Dickinson, and Wallace Stevens. More political themes are sounded in 2001’s “Why I Refused the National Medal for the Arts” and 1979’s “What Does a Woman Need to Know?” which exhorts Smith graduates not to lose their “outsider’s consciousness” in a patriarchal society. Throughout the collection, which traces Rich’s evolution as artist and activist, Rich never wavers from her view that art is political, even when ostensibly apolitical, and that the personal is political. Some especially prescient selections articulate, in the 1980s and ’90s, problems of racism, violence, and wealth inequality that have only recently more fully penetrated the national consciousness. Her strongest essays, such as 1997’s “Arts of the Possible,” pull together her critique of neoliberalism’s “drive to disenfranchise and dehumanize” countered by art’s capacity to embrace the fully human. Her essays, always provocative, clear, and packed with insights, are wise, refreshingly humane, and well worth reading.

June 1, 2018
An anthology of the acclaimed poet and essayist's most searing prose.This compendium demonstrates how Rich (Tonight No Poetry Will Serve: Poems 2007-2010, 2010, etc.), who won numerous prestigious awards during her life (1929-2012), also distinguished herself as a formidable public intellectual, literary critic, and cultural theorist. Arguing that the masculine world order has discounted the perspectives of women, Rich devoted her life to fostering "a collective description of the world which will be truly ours." Her essays leveraged her poems and journal entries as illustrations because she sought to dissolve the barriers between the personal, the political, and the aesthetic. In the section taken from her landmark book Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (1976), the author contrasts the supposed bliss of maternity with the "anxiety, physical weariness, anger, self-blame, boredom, and division within myself" that she felt as a mother of three young children. This collection features representative samples of Rich's signature critical move, the "re-vision" of literary foremothers whose works had long been misappropriated and misunderstood. She claims, for instance, that Emily Dickinson's reclusive lifestyle was not a sentimental tragedy but rather a practical and liberating choice for an ambitious writer conscious of her unorthodox brilliance and that the carefully controlled style in A Room of One's Own enabled Virginia Woolf to write for women while being overheard by men. Rich's outspoken alliance with lesbian feminists has tended to discourage those readers who could most benefit from her work, yet her thoughts about gender and identity from the 1970s and '80s sound all too current: "A change in the concept of sexual identity is essential if we are not going to see the old political order reassert itself in every new revolution." Feminist poet and literary critic Gilbert skillfully selects examples that convey the considerable breadth of Rich's purview as an essayist and exhibit her characteristic strategy of rejecting surface explanations and turning experience around in the light of subjective truth. Approachable, effective excerpts afford breathtaking encounters with genius.

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August 1, 2018

Renowned for her poetry and feminist leadership, National Book Award winner Rich (1929-2012) also created an extensive body of prose work. Among the essays collected here, many published during the author's lifetime, are reviews of other famous literary works, feminist and lesbian critiques, and commentary on the politics marking the third quarter of the 20th century. Excerpts from Rich's journals reveal her evolution from housewife and mother to new identities as well as her encounters with other poets. Clashes with her parents' personalities and social expectations, and confrontations with her own acculturated racism and blooming awareness of Jewish traumas find elegant passages that offer insight into Rich's own historical place and time. Gilbert's engaging introduction sets the tone for readers to explore the selections chosen for this volume. VERDICT For both popular and academic literature collections and readers across generations.--Francisca Goldsmith, Lib. Ronin, Worcester, MA

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