Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich

National Book Award
1974
Bollingen Prize
2003

Griffin Poetry Prize
2010

Adrienne Cecile Rich (May 16, 1929 – March 27, 2012) was an American poet, essayist and feminist. She was called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century", and was credited with bringing "the oppression of women and lesbians to the forefront of poetic discourse."

Her first collection of poetry, A Change of World, was selected by the senior poet W. H. Auden for the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award; he went on to write the introduction to the published volume. Rich famously declined the National Medal of Arts, protesting the United States House of Representatives and Speaker Gingrich's vote to end funding for the National Endowment for the Arts.

Read more about Adrienne Rich:  Selected Awards and Honors

Famous quotes by adrienne rich:

    Piece by piece I seem
    to re-enter the world: I first began
    a small, fixed dot, still see
    that old myself, a dark-blue thumbtack
    pushed into the scene,
    a hard little head protruding
    from the pointillist’s buzz and bloom.
    Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)

    It is the lesbian in us who is creative, for the dutiful daughter of the fathers in us is only a hack.
    Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)

    behind dry lips
    a loaded gun.
    Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)

    The mind’s passion is all for singling out.
    Obscurity has another tale to tell.
    Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)

    How people used to meet!
    starved, intense, the old
    Christmas gifts saved up till spring,
    and the old plain words,
    Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)