I’ve come to hate the term “problematic fave.” Many times it’s used merely to laugh away one’s consumption of what in previous times was termed a “guilty pleasure.” Adrienne Rich, this Sunday night’s featured poet, was the first modern poet I seriously read, when sometime in the mid- to late 1980s I picked up her selected poems collection The Fact of a Doorframe. Through her I grew to love poetry, and after all these years I can still quote many of her lines by heart — I even included or alluded to some of them in my book on Sweet Blue Flowers. She’s also the poet who led me to re-read Emily Dickinson with a fresh eye, and to read Muriel Rukeyser for the first time.
Adrienne Rich was also a TERF. More correctly, she was a close friend of, influence on, and advisor to Janice Raymond, the ur-TERF from whom all others directly or indirectly descend. This association has been pretty much memory-holed by those writing about Rich, and I can’t recall it being mentioned in Rich’s own writings; I discovered it only last year when researching an earlier version of this series. Though there’s some question as to whether or not Rich fully shared Raymond’s views, she apparently never explicitly disavowed them.
That inevitably taints my experience reading Adrienne Rich today, and I daresay would taint yours as well. That in turn caused me to consider whether or not I should include her in this series. When I first did this series in another place I decided not to. But, on re-thinking it, I decided, for better or worse, that it would be dishonest of me to memory-hole my love of Rich’s poetry, just as it would be dishonest of me not to mention her TERF associations. Here, then, is the very first poem of hers I read, the one that prompted me to read more:
The Fact of a Doorframe means there is something to hold onto with both hands while slowly thrusting my forehead against the wood and taking it away one of the oldest motions of suffering as Makeba sings a courage-song for warriors music is suffering made powerful I think of the story of the goose-girl who passed through the high gate where the head of her favorite mare was nailed to the arch and in a human voice If she could see thee now, thy mother’s heart would break said the head of Falada Now, again, poetry, violent, arcane, common, hewn of the commonest living substance into archway, portal, frame I grasp for you, your bloodstained splinters, your ancient and stubborn poise — as the earth trembles — burning out from the grain
In those years before Internet search engines I wasn’t sure what the references to “Makeba” and “Falada” meant, and never bothered to take myself to the public library to find out. The former is the South African musician and activist Miriam Makeba, and the latter is the name of the magical horse in the folk-tale “The Goose-Girl” collected by the Brothers Grimm.
If you’d like to read more
- Poetry Foundation: A biography of and selected poems by Adrienne Rich. This essay does not mention Rich’s association with Janice Raymond; her Wikipedia entry is more forthcoming on the subject.
- Internet Archive:
- The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New, 1950-1984, by Adrienne Rich. This collection includes most of the poems from Rich’s most famous (and I think best) book, The Dream of a Common Language, along with many selections from Rich’s next best book (in my opinion), the earlier Diving into the Wreck. (This collection was later reissued in a new edition that included poems through 2001.)
- Bookshop.org:
- Selected Poems, 1950-2012, by Adrienne Rich, edited and with an introduction by Albert Gelpi and Barbara Charlesworth Gelpi. This collection covers Rich’s entire career.
- Other:
- (CW: transphobic slurs) Torrin A. Greathouse’s “There’s No Trace of the Word ‘Transgender’ in Adrienne Rich’s Biography” is a poetic response to Rich and Raymond; those familiar with Rich’s poetry and prose will recognize many of her words hurled back at her. (The slurs are from Raymond.)
