Adrienne Rich
National Book Award
1974
Bollingen Prize
2003
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:
“How we dwelt in two worlds
the daughters and the mothers
in the kingdom of the sons.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“To be revolutionary is to be original, to know where we came from, to validate what is ours and help it to flourish, the best of what is ours, of our beginnings, our principles, and to leave behind what no longer serves us.”
—Ines Hernandez, U.S. Chicana political activist. As quoted in What Is Found There, ch. 28, by Adrienne Rich (1993)
“How people used to meet!
starved, intense, the old
Christmas gifts saved up till spring,
and the old plain words,”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“To work and suffer is to be at home.
All else is scenery ...”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“These are the things that we have learned to do
Who live in troubled regions.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)