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What is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics
Through journals, letters, dreams, and close readings of the work of many poets, Adrienne Rich reflects on how poetry and politics enter and impinge on American life. This expanded edition includes a new preface by the author as well as her post-9/11 "Six Meditations in Place of a Lecture."
344 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1993
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1371 people want to read
About the author
Adrienne Rich
139 books1,543 followersWorks, notably
Diving into the Wreck
(1973), of American poet and essayist Adrienne Rich champion such causes as pacifism, feminism, and civil rights for gays and lesbians.
A mother bore Adrienne Cecile Rich, a feminist, to a middle-class family with parents, who educated her until she entered public school in the fourth grade. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Radcliffe college in 1951, the same year of her first book of poems, A Change of World. That volume, chosen by W. H. Auden for the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award, and her next, The Diamond Cutters and Other Poems (1955), earned her a reputation as an elegant, controlled stylist.
In the 1960s, however, Rich began a dramatic shift away from her earlier mode as she took up political and feminist themes and stylistic experimentation in such works as Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law (1963), The Necessities of Life (1966), Leaflets (1969), and The Will to Change (1971). In Diving into the Wreck (1973) and The Dream of a Common Language (1978), she continued to experiment with form and to deal with the experiences and aspirations of women from a feminist perspective.
In addition to her poetry, Rich has published many essays on poetry, feminism, motherhood, and lesbianism. Her recent collections include An Atlas of the Difficult World (1991) and Dark Fields of the Republic: Poems 1991–1995 (1995).
A mother bore Adrienne Cecile Rich, a feminist, to a middle-class family with parents, who educated her until she entered public school in the fourth grade. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Radcliffe college in 1951, the same year of her first book of poems, A Change of World. That volume, chosen by W. H. Auden for the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award, and her next, The Diamond Cutters and Other Poems (1955), earned her a reputation as an elegant, controlled stylist.
In the 1960s, however, Rich began a dramatic shift away from her earlier mode as she took up political and feminist themes and stylistic experimentation in such works as Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law (1963), The Necessities of Life (1966), Leaflets (1969), and The Will to Change (1971). In Diving into the Wreck (1973) and The Dream of a Common Language (1978), she continued to experiment with form and to deal with the experiences and aspirations of women from a feminist perspective.
In addition to her poetry, Rich has published many essays on poetry, feminism, motherhood, and lesbianism. Her recent collections include An Atlas of the Difficult World (1991) and Dark Fields of the Republic: Poems 1991–1995 (1995).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 55 reviews
May 10, 2013
An incredibly inspiring and challenging collection of essays on poetry, particularly its politically transformative dimension. While Rich does speak about and from the USA, this is not so much a limitation but an implied challenge to the reader to think through their own context. From the final essay:
"A revolutionary poem will not tell you who or when to kill, what and when to burn, or even how to theorize. It reminds you (for you have known, somehow, all along, maybe lost track) where and when and how you are living and might live - it is a wick of desire... It is not programmatic: it searches for words amid the jamming of unfree free-market idiom, for images that will burn true outside the emotional theme-parks. A revolutionary poem is written out of one individual's confrontation with her/his own longings (including all that s/he is expected to deny) in the belief that its readers or hearers deserve an art as complex, as open to contradictions, as themselves."
"A revolutionary poem will not tell you who or when to kill, what and when to burn, or even how to theorize. It reminds you (for you have known, somehow, all along, maybe lost track) where and when and how you are living and might live - it is a wick of desire... It is not programmatic: it searches for words amid the jamming of unfree free-market idiom, for images that will burn true outside the emotional theme-parks. A revolutionary poem is written out of one individual's confrontation with her/his own longings (including all that s/he is expected to deny) in the belief that its readers or hearers deserve an art as complex, as open to contradictions, as themselves."
October 1, 2017
No solo es una antología poética americana. Es un análisis sobre el papel de la poesía en el desarrollo del hombre social en el siglo XX y una reivindicación de los versos como reflejo multicultural de lo que realmente pasa dentro de nosotros. A mí me ha servido como medio para descubrir otros poetas y, solo por eso, merece mi entusiasmo.
May 16, 2018
A beautiful reminder to aspiring poets and those who read poetry. Adrienne Rich’s book dismantles common conceptions of poetry as merely “resting on the given” and revitalizes poetry’s connection to the “multi-various shadings of human life” and “the heartbeat, memories, images of strangers.”
She introduces the poet as a kind of global citizen, that one should “track their own desire” as a found object and communicate this to the world, however that desire is able to manifest poetically. For Rich, it is important that the poet gives voice to one’s own set of experiences— experiences shaped by one’s class, race, gender and overall situation within the world. I loved the examples throughout: Phillis Wheatley, June Jordan, Francisco X. Alcaron.
The notebooks are approachable and take you through the experience of being a poet in America, faced with everything that we take for granted in poetry and in our lives. The text made me increasingly aware that poetry for aesthetic purposes is really not enough, that for some poetry serves as sustenance rather than luxury. And not to take the canon for granted, filled with individuals that give us only a certain kind of perspective.
A new conception of poetry arises: the poet interweaves the politics into the poetry; the poet challenges the politics that inherently exist within poetry as a system. Poetry and politics are intertwined and, together, create a conception of poetry as an active form of resistance, witness, and art.
What a vocation! I wish I had read this sooner.
She introduces the poet as a kind of global citizen, that one should “track their own desire” as a found object and communicate this to the world, however that desire is able to manifest poetically. For Rich, it is important that the poet gives voice to one’s own set of experiences— experiences shaped by one’s class, race, gender and overall situation within the world. I loved the examples throughout: Phillis Wheatley, June Jordan, Francisco X. Alcaron.
The notebooks are approachable and take you through the experience of being a poet in America, faced with everything that we take for granted in poetry and in our lives. The text made me increasingly aware that poetry for aesthetic purposes is really not enough, that for some poetry serves as sustenance rather than luxury. And not to take the canon for granted, filled with individuals that give us only a certain kind of perspective.
A new conception of poetry arises: the poet interweaves the politics into the poetry; the poet challenges the politics that inherently exist within poetry as a system. Poetry and politics are intertwined and, together, create a conception of poetry as an active form of resistance, witness, and art.
What a vocation! I wish I had read this sooner.
May 28, 2023
some of the best writing about writing i've read! rich brings her poetic voice into the critical & thoughtful analytic prose she offers in this book, and offers an articulate and well-rooted defense of the intimate connections between poetics and politics.
May 21, 2021
Rich is an erudite writer with an impressive knowledge of historical and contemporary poetry at the time of the book's publication (1993). Her interest in engaging politically with the American canon has led to a renaissance of poetic schools, styles, and forms. You'll want to read this with a notebook in hand in order to follow all the threads she tantalizingly drops. This book will remain at my elbow for a good while. There's too much to gain from it to limit myself to one reading.
December 6, 2019
Estou em busca de poetas mulheres que falem sobre poesia, arte, criatividade e essa coleção de ensaios traz uma boa reflexão sobre isso, em especial a dimensão política da poesia. Rich também recolhe lindos versos de poetas marginalizados. Eu particularmente adorei. Fiquei surpresa quando o livro acabou.
March 9, 2021
the first half is really, really interesting and fascinating but the second half was quite a let down
April 25, 2023
this collection constantly reminds the reader that it is written and situated at the turn of the century and yet is still so pertinent to the current moment, two decades into the future. so so interesting to examine + compare how our society's relationship with poetry and poets (and creativity in general) has continued to develop from when rich wrote about it, and in many ways reflects both her hopes and concerns.
also if all of that wasn't enough reason for me to love this, i need to thank rich for introducing me to so many brilliant poets i'd never heard about ... i still think about that excerpt from 'a woman talking to death' by judy grahn every goddamn day . 🫡🫡🫡
also if all of that wasn't enough reason for me to love this, i need to thank rich for introducing me to so many brilliant poets i'd never heard about ... i still think about that excerpt from 'a woman talking to death' by judy grahn every goddamn day . 🫡🫡🫡
September 19, 2012
Inspiring book on the value of poetry and the importance of poetry in people's lives. There is an especially good section titled 'To Invent What We Desire' -- it's a poem that basically sums up the themes of the book. And it is an inspiring piece of writing for anyone who wants to write, or is presently writing:
'That to track your own desire,
in your own language, is not an isolated
task. You yourself are marked by family,
gender, caste, landscape, the struggle
to make a living, or the absence of such
a struggle. The rich and the poor are
equally marked. Poetry is never free of
those markings even when it appears to
be. Look into the images.'
'That to track your own desire,
in your own language, is not an isolated
task. You yourself are marked by family,
gender, caste, landscape, the struggle
to make a living, or the absence of such
a struggle. The rich and the poor are
equally marked. Poetry is never free of
those markings even when it appears to
be. Look into the images.'
October 15, 2009
Crucial. Timeless.
So rarely do essays successfully argue for the importance of poetry and engaged politics in daily life. And rarer to have a speaker this thoughtful.
You might be turned off by the occasional flourishes of new age (Native American philosophy) or poetic flight (lists of bird names), but Rich is too deft to get mired in the cliches.
Why wasn't I required to read this in any of the many English classes I took?
So rarely do essays successfully argue for the importance of poetry and engaged politics in daily life. And rarer to have a speaker this thoughtful.
You might be turned off by the occasional flourishes of new age (Native American philosophy) or poetic flight (lists of bird names), but Rich is too deft to get mired in the cliches.
Why wasn't I required to read this in any of the many English classes I took?
June 20, 2010
Shows a deep understanding of the subject. I read it twice because I didn't want to miss anything.
April 28, 2011
It is difficult/ to get the news from poems/ yet men die miserably/ every day/ for lack of what is found there. - William Carlos Williams
August 29, 2023
A quote from this book was part of the introduction to Rich’s work in her chapter of Gary Geddes’s 20th Century Poetry and Poetics. I’m desperate to widen the scope of my reading; I want to stretch myself to uncomfortable lengths to see what benefit I can glean.
Someone said that us men must listen more to women. When I read a book that was written by a woman, that’s all I’m doing is listening. I gave Adrienne Rich my undivided attention in twenty-minute segments for several weeks under the dying summer sun, and I struggled hard to understand what she was saying.
It seemed to me that she was frustrated with the lack of power that poetry possessed in North America as compared with that of other countries—notably ones that locked poets up for inciting revolution. She also spent time wrestling with her difficulties of being not only a female poet, but a lesbian one. I’d had no idea she was gay; I’d simply read and enjoyed her work in Geddes’s book. Sexual identity in art is confounding to me. I never feel the need to know, but once I do know an artist’s orientation it becomes an annoyance when considering their work. I suspect this is how many people felt when, for example, they first saw a colleague expressing non-normative pronouns in a Zoom call. How does this affect the work exactly?
Well, it didn’t. At least, not until you brought it up.
It sounds like times were tough for lesbians in the 80s, at least according to Rich’s experience. Nowadays I’d manage it’s far less so, at least here in North America. I’m still figuring out my own poets, and while I acknowledge that it’s an ongoing process with no clearly defined terminus—aside from my inevitable demise—I know many things that it is not, and one of those is a “call to power”.
I did get one tangible benefit from reading this book, though: a new poem. Here it is.
Add Up
I’m reading Adrienne Rich’s What Is Found There,
and she’s digging with a heavy shovel
into her experience as a lesbian poet
when such a thing was hard.
I’m more fascinated by a piece of detritus
captured in the gutter of the book.
It glows orange in the hot August sun;
a tomato seed, or an insect—perhaps a fruit fly.
I should be focused on Adrienne’s words,
but I can’t pretend to understand her journey.
I’m just a straight man on a straight road,
nodding at his girlfriend, trying not to lose his way.
And so, I stop reading and write this poem.
Someone said that us men must listen more to women. When I read a book that was written by a woman, that’s all I’m doing is listening. I gave Adrienne Rich my undivided attention in twenty-minute segments for several weeks under the dying summer sun, and I struggled hard to understand what she was saying.
It seemed to me that she was frustrated with the lack of power that poetry possessed in North America as compared with that of other countries—notably ones that locked poets up for inciting revolution. She also spent time wrestling with her difficulties of being not only a female poet, but a lesbian one. I’d had no idea she was gay; I’d simply read and enjoyed her work in Geddes’s book. Sexual identity in art is confounding to me. I never feel the need to know, but once I do know an artist’s orientation it becomes an annoyance when considering their work. I suspect this is how many people felt when, for example, they first saw a colleague expressing non-normative pronouns in a Zoom call. How does this affect the work exactly?
Well, it didn’t. At least, not until you brought it up.
It sounds like times were tough for lesbians in the 80s, at least according to Rich’s experience. Nowadays I’d manage it’s far less so, at least here in North America. I’m still figuring out my own poets, and while I acknowledge that it’s an ongoing process with no clearly defined terminus—aside from my inevitable demise—I know many things that it is not, and one of those is a “call to power”.
I did get one tangible benefit from reading this book, though: a new poem. Here it is.
Add Up
I’m reading Adrienne Rich’s What Is Found There,
and she’s digging with a heavy shovel
into her experience as a lesbian poet
when such a thing was hard.
I’m more fascinated by a piece of detritus
captured in the gutter of the book.
It glows orange in the hot August sun;
a tomato seed, or an insect—perhaps a fruit fly.
I should be focused on Adrienne’s words,
but I can’t pretend to understand her journey.
I’m just a straight man on a straight road,
nodding at his girlfriend, trying not to lose his way.
And so, I stop reading and write this poem.
May 27, 2019
This is my May reading challenge book, as Adrienne Rich was born this month. I'd heard of her - one of her quotes was printed on our t-shirts for a Take Back the Night march when I was in college in the '90s.
But I'd never read her. As I've grown older, I've come to appreciate more poetry, including Alice Walker and Shakespeare. Maybe now I'm finally mature enough to get it where I wasn't before.
This book isn't her poetry, but she talks about how poetry illuminates the world, how much we need poetry from marginalized communities, and deconstructs chosen poems. She writes from a place of a marginalized poet, and it's extremely powerful.
The book is amazing. I finally understand some poetry that I didn't before because of the way she talks about it. This should be required reading in high school English class so students can understand what poetry's about and why it's necessary. It's great for adults who didn't get this kind of understanding when they were in high school. Highly recommend!
But I'd never read her. As I've grown older, I've come to appreciate more poetry, including Alice Walker and Shakespeare. Maybe now I'm finally mature enough to get it where I wasn't before.
This book isn't her poetry, but she talks about how poetry illuminates the world, how much we need poetry from marginalized communities, and deconstructs chosen poems. She writes from a place of a marginalized poet, and it's extremely powerful.
The book is amazing. I finally understand some poetry that I didn't before because of the way she talks about it. This should be required reading in high school English class so students can understand what poetry's about and why it's necessary. It's great for adults who didn't get this kind of understanding when they were in high school. Highly recommend!
September 15, 2023
Got hold of both the 1993 edition--when lesbian feminism was an emergent voice--and the 2003 edition--when i didn't know what became of it all--which must have made the book twice as important and twice more relevant.
It speaks of the critic's task, which is also poetry's task: not to deflate or shrink its scope or power but to open a clearing in the imagination where creation may take place. North American poetry, it says--quoting John Haines--has been mostly "casual", "happenstance","sporadic and shallow" in its response to things, "mere self-entertainment for the few".
Like the poets whose works she praises, neither does Rich coo nor stand timorous before the Beloveds and the new muses of free-market USA.
The selections are as brave. Great lines and great poetry, speaking from the ashes of the concentration camps and the ghettos, from the Anzalduan prairies, from Hiroshima, from all over the place. John Haines. Muriel Rukeyser. Irena Klepfisz. Judy Grahn. Suzanne Gardinier. And more.
A favorite is Haines' "In the Forest without Leaves" quoting here only the first of ten stanzas.
In the forest without leaves:
forest or wires and twisted steel . . .
The seasons are of rust
and renewal,
or there are no seasons at all,
only shadows that lengthen and grow small--
sunlight on the edge of a blade.
Nothing that thrives, but metal
feeding on itself--
cables for roots,
thickets of knotted iron,
and hard knots of rivets
swelling in the rain.
Not the shadows of leaves,
but shadows where the leaves might be. . .
It speaks of the critic's task, which is also poetry's task: not to deflate or shrink its scope or power but to open a clearing in the imagination where creation may take place. North American poetry, it says--quoting John Haines--has been mostly "casual", "happenstance","sporadic and shallow" in its response to things, "mere self-entertainment for the few".
Like the poets whose works she praises, neither does Rich coo nor stand timorous before the Beloveds and the new muses of free-market USA.
The selections are as brave. Great lines and great poetry, speaking from the ashes of the concentration camps and the ghettos, from the Anzalduan prairies, from Hiroshima, from all over the place. John Haines. Muriel Rukeyser. Irena Klepfisz. Judy Grahn. Suzanne Gardinier. And more.
A favorite is Haines' "In the Forest without Leaves" quoting here only the first of ten stanzas.
In the forest without leaves:
forest or wires and twisted steel . . .
The seasons are of rust
and renewal,
or there are no seasons at all,
only shadows that lengthen and grow small--
sunlight on the edge of a blade.
Nothing that thrives, but metal
feeding on itself--
cables for roots,
thickets of knotted iron,
and hard knots of rivets
swelling in the rain.
Not the shadows of leaves,
but shadows where the leaves might be. . .
August 24, 2019
An examination of the political in poetry, ranging from the direct and intentional to the subtle and subconscious. Still new to the world of poetry, I found this book (literally “found” while killing time at the library in the poetry section) to be a great introduction to several poets (including Rich), their work in the context of politics, and the role of poetry as an often underrated and sometime overtly dismissed political medium. I look forward to revisiting this book down the road.
November 30, 2022
Rich's observations about poetry and the world are as relevant today as they were in the 1990s. The ideas here have more than held up, and her words push us as writers and readers to continue to be better, to engage with the hard things, to look the world and its events squarely in the face and respond with and through poetry, with language that remakes us. This is a book to read again and again and again.
February 29, 2024
“What Is Found There” by Adrienne Rich is a compelling collection of essays that blends feminist polemics with sharp analysis of the American condition. Rich emphasizes the necessity of poetry, exploring its social responsibility and its raw material drawn from lived experiences. While occasionally overshadowed by the poetry and words of others, this volume remains challenging, rewarding, and thought-provoking.
February 3, 2021
The biggest takeaway from this for me - and it's a book full to the brim of knowledge and insight - was that the progressive movement has been going on far longer than I ever realized. I suppose this is a side effect of being young, but it's always felt to me like progressive politics originated when they hit the mainstream in the last decade, which I can see now is woefully myopic.
July 1, 2024
i recommend if only to encounter some of the most haunting & wonderful poems & poets hidden by the national fear and thus under/non-promotion of poetry! miss adrienne never misses! astute, scathing, exalting, and lived study of the devaluation of poetry, the ability of poetry to voice unvoiceable things, the community of poetry, the saving power of poetry, etc etc. still thinking about format as something to breach, rather than create according to, & how poetry is anti-capitalistic by nature, thus creating art is a political act.
January 6, 2019
Nadine Gordimer writes, "Adrienne Rich is the Blake of American letters." I really hope that William Blake is the Rich of English letters. This book is amazing and recommend it to anybody who reads poems.
October 6, 2021
I started this when I was a kid and I was entranced. I am now pretty sure this is just peak 90s activist poet nostalgia politics.
December 12, 2023
mothered
April 16, 2024
genuinely life-changing.
March 4, 2012
A manifesto on behalf of the power of poetry to give voice to the politically marginalized, to resist commercialization by its very nature, and to remind us of our deeper desires for calm and reflection even when the stress and misfortune of everyday life lead us to a place where it is not easy to reflect. Presented as a long series of personal essays, it seemed that the author was saying the same thing over and over again, so one might just choose to read a few, but each essay was individually beautiful.
Rich said multiple times: maybe this is the moment when we'll finally wake up, get it, transform our political life to be inclusive and healing. By "this moment" she specifically referenced the year 1992, exactly twenty years ago. When she speaks about access to poetry, she speaks of going to a mall and looking for the poetry bookshelf, which dates the question of access to information just as surely as if she hadn't specifically said "1992". In that sense it's a bit of a time machine, but a lot of the content is timeless.
Rich said multiple times: maybe this is the moment when we'll finally wake up, get it, transform our political life to be inclusive and healing. By "this moment" she specifically referenced the year 1992, exactly twenty years ago. When she speaks about access to poetry, she speaks of going to a mall and looking for the poetry bookshelf, which dates the question of access to information just as surely as if she hadn't specifically said "1992". In that sense it's a bit of a time machine, but a lot of the content is timeless.
April 5, 2013
Love this quote :
Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you…it means that you do not treat your body as a commodity with which to purchase superficial intimacy or economic security; for our bodies to be treated as objects, our minds are in mortal danger. It means insisting that those to whom you give your friendship and love are able to respect your mind. It means being able to say, with Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre: “I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all the extraneous delights should be withheld or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give.”
Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you…it means that you do not treat your body as a commodity with which to purchase superficial intimacy or economic security; for our bodies to be treated as objects, our minds are in mortal danger. It means insisting that those to whom you give your friendship and love are able to respect your mind. It means being able to say, with Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre: “I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all the extraneous delights should be withheld or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give.”
December 13, 2010
I'm only about half way through this right now, but it's absolutely what i need to be reading. This book was written in the '90s but feels completely relevant to this moment. Rich's language is beautiful, intricately woven, and every bit of it rings true. This book is painful in the best sense in that in challenges my way of thinking about poetry, about politics, about art and about my own life. I'm very thankful for this book.
August 20, 2010
i've read this book in sections, and am always re-reading sections. Adrienne Rich gives so much to chew over in her discussions of poetry; i digest some new angle of her essays each time. It's one of my standard "nightstand" books...i often read a section before going to sleep.
'Getting to take a "master class" with Rich in april 2000 & have her personally sign my copy of this book made it all the more treasured...
'Getting to take a "master class" with Rich in april 2000 & have her personally sign my copy of this book made it all the more treasured...
June 17, 2015
"The reading of a poem, a poetry reading, is not a spectacle, nor can it be passively received. It's an exchange of electrical currents through language...I can't write a poem to manipulate you; it will not succeed...I can't write a poem from dishonest motives; it will betray its shoddy provenance....I can't write a poem simply from good intentions, wanting to set things right, make it all better; the energy will leak out of it, it will end by meaning less than it says."
April 27, 2013
In the truest sense, Adrienne Rich embodied what it means to be a poet: an artist/writer who is able to reflect on their society, seeing the past without shying away from its grotesqueness; filtering that acquired knowledge into an (as honest as possible) commentary on the present and both a warning and hope for the future, all while using beautiful, damn near profound language.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 55 reviews