Tonight No Poetry Will Serve: Poems 2007-2010 - Hardcover

Widely read, widely anthologized, widely interviewed, and widely taught, Adrienne Rich (1929–2012) was for decades among the most influential writers of the feminist movement and one of the best-known American public intellectuals. She wrote two dozen volumes of poetry and more than a half-dozen of prose. Her constellation of honors includes two National Book Awards, a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant, and a Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters by the National Book Foundation. Ms. Rich’s volumes of poetry include The Dream of a Common Language, A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far, An Atlas of the Difficult World, The School Among the Ruins, and Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth. Her prose includes the essay collections On Lies, Secrets, and Silence; Blood, Bread, and Poetry; an influential essay, “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,” and the nonfiction book Of Woman Born, which examines the institution of motherhood as a socio-historic construct. In 2010, she was honored with The Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry's Lifetime Recognition Award.

Rich writes, “I believe almost everything I know, have come to understand, is somewhere in this book.” The critically acclaimed poet of 30 books of poetry and prose fills her latest retrospective collection with poems that express an intimate understanding of life, death, and resilience with recurring images of ice, blood, and bodies. The opening poem, “Waiting for Rain, for Music,” dives in with “waiting for tomorrow / long after tomorrow / should’ve come.” This motif of regret builds to resignation in “From Sickbed Shores,” the book’s central poem, which asks, “what is it anyway to exist as / matter to / matter?” While writing of chronic illness, Rich offers wordplay redolent of her caustic wit and black humor and reminiscent of Plath. “Ballade of the Poverties,” a Prévert-like poem deviating in style from the book’s short-line, at times difficult, poems, speaks to timeless themes of injustice and ignorance and ends with the narrator offering the reader a mirror. Rich’s poetry itself is a mirror, reflecting the truths about humanity this discerning poet has come to understand. --Katharine Fronk