3. Adrienne Rich

In her lifetime Adrienne Rich was a widely read and lauded poet. Much of this is due to her ability to explore both personal and social issues through her depiction of a variety of characters in dramatic settings. She often inspects the nature of humanity through the most common and yet the most complex staple of the human condition, the relationship between two people. She writes with honesty and humility, without judgement, about her own issues.

However, the critic Margaret Dickie says that Rich has never been able to write ‘love’ without writing ‘politics’. ‘Living in Sin’ is a perfect example of this. The title suggests society's attitude to people living together without marriage. To look at, the poem seems to be one block of free verse, shapeless text — like the open minded, undefined and experimental nature of their relationship — but there is actually a very strong structure. Upon reading, the poem is clearly divided into four sections, the first describes the fantasy the woman had had, the second describes her reality, then his, and finally the reality of their relationship.

The woman's fantasy gave me the impression she had believed that living together would be fresh and exciting and that her untraditional situation would relieve her of the traditional difficulties, ‘no dust upon the furniture of love’. Her expectation looked like something staged on the cover of a magazine, ‘A plate of pears,/ a piano with a Persian shawl’ and now she feels like a heretic for wishing ‘the taps less vocal’, or ‘the panes relieved of grime’. It has a subtle air of confusion surrounding it as many of the lines are interrupted by full stops, ‘the panes relieved of grime. A plate of pears’ or run into each other, ‘a cat/ stalking’.

This technique becomes more apparent as the woman comes to terms with the hard truths, ‘that morning light/ so coldly’, ‘the scraps/ of last night’s cheese’, and this acts as a subtle representation of her stress and disillusionment. She wanted something different, the ‘picturesque amusing mouse’ rising at her ‘urgings’, but instead ‘at five each separate stair’ it illusively writhes. She feels judged even in the privacy of her home, the beetle’s eyes ‘envoy from some village in the moldings’. 

This is contrasted by the man’s point of view. He exists blissfully in the security of his own apathy; he played ‘a dozen notes upon the keyboard’ and ‘declared it out of tune’ while she is ‘jeered by the minor demons’. This section has a very different rhythm; each line is uniform and together form a list of short simple actions. He is clearly less distressed than she is. He does not seem to have any of the domestic concerns that she so clearly does. 

Despite the fact that they have moved into a new progressive arrangement, the reality is that she is expected to take the traditional domestic role. The poem does not judge them or vilify either of them, and by the end they are ‘back in love again’ though, as the speaker admits, ‘not so wholly’. Boland uses these characters to comment on gender roles and expectations. It is so interesting because it is still relevant today. 

Rich is more directly personal when she reflects on her marriage in ‘From a Survivor’. Again, the couple had thought they were the exception to the rule but she admits that they had only made ‘the ordinary pact/ of men and women in those days’, and that it was naive to believe they could ‘resist the failures of the race’. 

In this poem the speaker forgives herself for their naivety, rather than focusing on the conflict it created. Now that she understands it, she understands her love for him more clearly:

 ‘Your body is as vivid to me/ as it ever was: even more/ since my feeling for it is clearer’. There is a sense of communication between them; the speaker refers to them as ‘me’ and ‘you’ rather than the ‘she’ and ‘he’ of ‘Living in Sin’.

There is a sense of regret that this wisdom had not come earlier as he is now ‘wastefully dead’; that they couldn’t have ‘made the leap’ they had talked of making, and appreciated each other more while he was alive. Nonetheless, she can now incorporate this wisdom into her own life, understanding it as ‘a succession of brief amazing movements,/ each one making possible the next’.

‘Trying to Talk with a Man’ is another unromanticised and honest analysis of her relationship. The setting could not be any more dramatic. The couple are in a ghost town in the desert, an old bomb testing site, where they had hoped to confront the issues in their own relationship. ‘Out in this desert we are testing bombs,’ she writes, and we immediately understand that this environment is also an emotional testing site. She feels ‘an underground river’ in this desolate place, one that this ‘bomb’ might expose, uncovering a wealth of emotions below the surface. She describes how it moves with ‘An acute angle of understanding/ moving itself like a locus of the sun’. While they both hope to confront this, the image comes across as unwelcome and threatening: the ‘desert’, ‘bombs’', the ‘locus’. She takes a moment to reflect on how things were before.

‘What we’ve had to give up to get here’, the relationship has cost each of them a lot of sacrifice, ‘whole LP collections’, but now they have to give up something more important. They have to give up their fantasies and unrealistic ideas of romance, ‘the films we starred in’ when they were first in love ‘pretending to be children’. She refers to this with both resentment and nostalgia as she recalls the ‘language of love-letters, of suicide notes’, the melodramatic communication that no longer serves them; it all must be put aside in order to face their problems as adults.

This ‘ghost town/ surrounded by a silence’ is a place of maturity, the silence ‘came with us/ and is familiar’, but they are still frightened by it, ‘everything we were saying until now/ was an effort to blot it out’. There is a tension between them as they wait in fearful anticipation of this bomb, in this cold war she feels ‘more helpless/ with you than without you’ and his eyes ‘spell out : EXIT’ as he looks at her ‘like an emergency’.

As much as they may both want to salvage this waning relationship, the chance of it surviving is very slim. Once the silence breaks, so will they, and this bomb of reality will obliterate them. In some ways the silence is their way of holding on to each other; instead they talk ‘of the danger/ as if it were not ourselves/ as if we were testing anything else.’

Whilst the poem is deeply personal, Rich uses herself and her husband’s situation to reflect more widely on wider social concerns. The title of the poem suggests the gender conflict and it is the man that has ‘power’. It is extremely difficult for the woman to leave but it is necessary. 

Power continues to be a concern in ‘Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers’. Rich uses the character of Aunt Jennifer and we get a glimpse of her life and marriage. Rich points out that ‘Uncle’s wedding band’ is a ‘massive weight’ and it sits ‘heavily upon Aunt Jennifer’s hand.’ Aunt’s bright and beautiful panels are a hint at her potential but she is weighed down by societal expectations. She is ‘mastered’ and has gone through ‘ordeals.’ 

Rich continues with the character of the Uncle in her poem ‘The Uncle Speaks in the Drawing Room.’ The setting of the poem is dramatic. The uncle speaks from the safety of his plush drawing room about the gathering mob. The atmosphere in the opening stanza is ominous. The mob are ‘sullen’ and speak in ‘bitter tones.’ Some have also ‘held and fingered stones.’ Rich is using these characters to comment on the wider social unrest in society. 

Uncle’s patronising tone is conveyed by his assessment that they are ‘follies that subside’. He has been born into privilege and looks down on those below him. He declares, ‘None as yet dare lift an arm.’ Years of expectation and luxury have made him feel that he has a right to his power and possessions. These ‘treasures’ have been ‘handed down’. He will continue to ‘stand between’ the ‘dead glass blowers’ and the ‘missile throwers.’ The uncle does not want change because he has everything. However, just like the time that it was written, there are rumblings of change. 

I greatly enjoyed Rich’s poetry. She skilfully used a variety of characters, including herself, to probe both personal and political issues. Her poetry prompted me to think more deeply about myself and the world around me.