Adrienne Rich

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AR ranks as one of the most influential figures in the twentieth-century feminist movement, and as one of the most influential contemporary American poets (though her political activism impeded the usual workings of the canonisation process, producing a counter-flow against the voices raised in praise of her work). Like other great poets she has produced a body of theorising and critical prose that goes hand-in-hand with her poetry, and that has been almost equally clarifying and liberating for women seeking to understand the dynamics of history.

Milestones

16 May 1929

AR , American poet, critic, theorist, and activist, was born in Baltimore, Maryland.
Davidson, Cathy N., and Linda Wagner-Martin, editors. The Oxford Companion to Women’s Writing in the United States. Oxford University Press.
760

1939

The ten-year-old AR reached print with Ariadne: A Play in Three Acts.
Contemporary Authors: New Revision Series. Gale Research.
74: 339

1973

AR published Diving into the Wreck: Poems, 1971-1972, a volume of poetry marked by its new, uncompromising feminism.
Contemporary Authors: New Revision Series. Gale Research.
74: 339

1974

AR won the (American) National Book Award for Diving into the Wreck: Poems, 1971-1972; she donated the cash prize to the Sisterhood of Black Single Mothers .
Contemporary Authors: New Revision Series. Gale Research.
74: 338, 340-1

By late 1976

AR published Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution, a controversial yet influential volume of prose feminist analysis.
Contemporary Authors: New Revision Series. Gale Research.
74: 339

1979

AR published another landmark work of feminist critique, On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose, 1966-1978.
Contemporary Authors: New Revision Series. Gale Research.
74: 339

Summer 1980

AR published one of her best-known works, the essay Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence in the Sexuality issue of the journal Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society.
Jay, Gregory S., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 67. Gale Research.
237
Contemporary Authors: New Revision Series. Gale Research.
74: 338

11 February 2011

AR 's final collection of new work, titled Tonight No Poetry Will Serve: Poems 2007-2010, appeared in the year before her death.
Blackwell’s Online Bookshop. http://Bookshop.Blackwell.co.uk.

27 March 2012

AR died at her home in Santa Cruz, California, of complications from the rheumatoid arthritis which she had suffered from since her twenties.
Bindel, Julie. “Adrienne Rich obituary: Radical poet revered by feminists and literary critics alike”. Guardian.co.uk.

Biography

Birth and Cultural Formation

16 May 1929

AR , American poet, critic, theorist, and activist, was born in Baltimore, Maryland.
Davidson, Cathy N., and Linda Wagner-Martin, editors. The Oxford Companion to Women’s Writing in the United States. Oxford University Press.
760