book data
348 ratings, 4.35 average rating, 32 reviews
(more data...)
edit
published
April 1993
by W. W. Norton & Company
binding
Paperback, 88 pages
isbn
0393310337
(isbn13: 9780393310337)
description
This collection of poems from 1974 to 1977 is written by one of America's most successful and most moving modern poets. By the author of An Atlas of the Difficult World. R...more
Sign in to Goodreads to see your friends' reviews of this book.
There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Be the first to start one »
friend reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.
This book is currently not featured on any Listopia lists.
Add this book to your favorite list »
other reviews (showing 1-20 of 412)
the poem, "floating, unnumbered" showed my just how a poem can be read and appreciated for its beauty in words, but once fully experienced in ones own life, only then does the poem enter your body
Like this review?
yes
(1 person liked it)
add a comment
Read in June, 2008
This book reminded me initially of Jonathan Lear's Love and Its Place in Nature. For Rich, as for Lear, love is a part of nature, and Rich's book––rhetorical in nature––argues for a reconstitution of this love, argues against the rhythms our cultures impose on us. As anyone who knows her poetry can guess, the love Rich suggests moves against patriarchal traditions, and she works within these poems from a strong, feminist stance.
Larger than a label, though, Rich moves through this boo...more
Larger than a label, though, Rich moves through this boo...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in November, 1998
recommended to Megan by:
Anita Skeen
This book contains 'Twenty-One Love Poems' which came out as a pamphlet and is pretty hard to find. 'Twenty-One Love Poems' is Rich's first overtly lesbian poetry, I think, and is generally really excellent and important work. 'Twenty-One Love Poems' is some of the most beautiful and erotic lesbian poetry, but it's also incredibly socially conscious. I think the lines "two women together is a work/nothing in civilization has made simple" is an excellent sample of the subject matter dea...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in May, 2008
wow.
i have been reading and re-reading this collection for almost a week now. i cannot decide if my life feels like a love story because of this poetry or if i am strongly drawn to this poetry because my life already was a love story...
and i don't mean love story of the fairy tale/disney variety. i mean the love story of life, the struggle of understanding self and others. the journey of asking questions, knowing truth and feeling with your heart. the pain, despair and reward that comes ...more
i have been reading and re-reading this collection for almost a week now. i cannot decide if my life feels like a love story because of this poetry or if i am strongly drawn to this poetry because my life already was a love story...
and i don't mean love story of the fairy tale/disney variety. i mean the love story of life, the struggle of understanding self and others. the journey of asking questions, knowing truth and feeling with your heart. the pain, despair and reward that comes ...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in September, 2008
I am quite the novice when it comes to poetry but I find Adrienne Rich to be beautifully digestible. I was lead to her work by a friend who sent me a great poem of hers called From an Atlas of the Difficult World which I highly recommend. Her style is smooth, that at times, comes out of nowhere with a heavy punch. It suits me.
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in May, 2000
*Signed*
"Twenty One Love Poems" was a pivotal sequence for me, especially as I grew to understand why I tend to write in sequences. I spent the month of December that year transcribing one poem each day, rewriting and retyping each word to really inhabit what she had done on the page.
"Twenty One Love Poems" was a pivotal sequence for me, especially as I grew to understand why I tend to write in sequences. I spent the month of December that year transcribing one poem each day, rewriting and retyping each word to really inhabit what she had done on the page.
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in September, 2007
I feel like people are always looking for poetry books for their friends who don't like poetry. What a sad, disappointing thing to do! This book, though, is a great reminder to those who may have forgotten how much they like poetry.
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in May, 2008
i don't know. it's weird to rate a "classic." these poems are very rich (pun not intended) so i think when i spend more time with them and return to some of them they'll become more valuable to me.
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
"My heart is moved by all I cannot save:
so much has been destroyed
I have to cast my lot with those
who age after age, perversely,
with no extraordinary power,
reconstitute the world."
so much has been destroyed
I have to cast my lot with those
who age after age, perversely,
with no extraordinary power,
reconstitute the world."
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
I was 21 when I came across the "floating unnumbered" poem... read it again and again and again... It was a real epiphany. I still shiver when I think of that moment.
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
these poems are the reason I read poetry. These are the poems I read aloud whether i'm alone or in good company. Poetry like this is what turns people into lovers of poetry.
Like this review?
yes
2 comments
Read in January, 1988
Sensual, beautiful poems about women with one another, about women in relationship, about women who dream, scheme, hope, and strive. Sensual read.
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
While some of her poetry was rather take-it-or-leave-it for me, the Twenty One Love Poems were breathtaking. Definitely worth reading.
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in January, 1999
So many of Adrienne Rich's poems make me feel less alone. The Dream of a Common Language is, well, a bad-ass dream.
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
another book that there just simply aren't words to describe how deeply it resonated with me, inside of me.
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
absolutely beautiful. particularly nice is "Phantasia for Elvita Shatayev"...
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in January, 2007
recommends it for:
Adrienne Rich fans; poetry lovers; feminist readers
Not my favorite Adrienne Rich volume, but I really like the love poems.
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
i must say: one of my favorite poetry books for almost a decade.
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in June, 2007
recommends it for:
all ya'll
sometimes we must take ourselves more seriously or die.
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
poetry
(on 67 people's shelves)
to-read (on 25 people's shelves)
to-read (on 24 people's shelves)
currently-reading (on 4 people's shelves)
own (on 3 people's shelves)
own (on 3 people's shelves)
favorites (on 3 people's shelves)
poems (on 2 people's shelves)
in-my-collection (on 1 person's shelf)
best-beloved (on 1 person's shelf)
More shelves...
to-read (on 25 people's shelves)
to-read (on 24 people's shelves)
currently-reading (on 4 people's shelves)
own (on 3 people's shelves)
own (on 3 people's shelves)
favorites (on 3 people's shelves)
poems (on 2 people's shelves)
in-my-collection (on 1 person's shelf)
best-beloved (on 1 person's shelf)
More shelves...
quotes from this book
"Power
Living in the earth-deposits of our history
Today a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earth
one bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-old
cure for fever or melancholy a tonic
for living on this earth in the winters of this climate.
Today I was reading about Marie Curie:
she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness
her body bombarded for years by the element
she had purified
It seems she denied to the end
the source of the cataracts on her eyes
the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends
till she could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencil
She died a famous woman denying
her wounds
denying
her wounds came from the same source as her power. "
More quotes...
groups with this book
