Snapshots of a daughter-in-law,

by Adrienne Rich

Rich's third book of poems. In Collected Early Poems, 1950-1970, Rich discusses this book as a watershed moment in the discovery of her voice.

Genres: Poetry, Feminism, Classics, The United States Of America, LGBT, American

64 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1967

About the author

Works, 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).

Reviews

[Julie Ehlers · Rating 3 out of 5]

I feel like it's not right for me to analyze Adrienne Rich's early poetry based on where I think she is in her process of emotional development, but I can't seem to help it. The fact is, in what would have to be considered a transitional period in her life and in her writing, this poetry is fascinatingly uneven. There's no obvious epiphany that colors all of the work; it's more like some poems seem stilted and false and others show a striking emotional honesty—or at least, that's how it seems to me. It could be all in my head, but where else am I supposed to get my ideas? Onward through the oeuvre.

[Adriana Scarpin · Rating 5 out of 5]

O poema título é uma obra prima.

[Craig Werner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law was the first book in which Rich sounds the explicitly feminist themes that would appear in ever-changing form through the rest of her career. Understandably, the title poem, an absolute touchstone for feminist poetry and poetics, has overshadowed the rest of the collection. That's unfortunate, not because Snapshots isn't deserving of the attention, but because "Readings of History," "A Marriage in the 'Sixties," and "The Roofwalker" come very close to matching its impact and because many others reward serious attention. ("From Morning-Glory to Petersburg," "Antinous: The Diaries," "Double Monologue" and "Novella" are on my list, but I marked lines from at least a dozen others.)

Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law is clearly a transitional volume, one in which Rich consciously determines to break the bonds--aesthetic, cultural and though she doesn't say so directly, marital--that have been constraining her. It's a process that demands courage and a descent into the uncharted depths of the psyche where she finds that "Unspeakable fairy tales ebb like blood through my head." In response her persona--not quite autobiographical but profoundly personal--seeks "To live illusionless, in the abandoned mine--shaft of doubt," while wondering if it is possible to "still mime illusions for others?" The goal, always provisional, is both clear and almost (and only almost) unspeakably difficult: "I have wanted one thing: to know/ simply as I know my name/ at any given moment, where I stand." The "any given moment" is key because, as "Snapshots" suggests, nothing is really quite given. Everything is mediated by what we've been taught and what we think we know.

That why Rich is moving away from traditional metrics (though there are still some deftly deployed rhymes and she's always aware of cadence if no longer as closely tied to iambic pentameter). In their place, she's reaching for a poetics of the colon, for perceptions tested for their applicability, their fit, and for the places they don't fit. That leads to a kind of proto-feminist existentialism: "Today we stalk/ in the raging desert of our thought/ whose single drop of mercy is/ each knows the other there." That's solace, but its always contingent: "Two strangers/ thrust for life upon a rock,/may have at last the perfect hour of talk/ that language aches for; still--two minds, two messages."

This is the first volume in which Rich began dating her poems. Again, that foregrounds process, and it's clearly visible in the movement from the late 50s poems that might have fit in The Diamond Cutters, to those that make it very clear that Rich is moving into new territories without, yet, a map.

[Nadine in NY Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's difficult to review early books by authors you admire, but here goes ... This collection is uneven. The first half feels like she's trying to be Keats but she really wants to be Yeats (I just use those two because I used to confuse them when I was little). She's struggling to find her voice; most poems feel stilted and needlessly formal. They absolutely do not speak to me. A few moments of brilliance try to break out but never quite make it.

Then, sometime in late 1961, things change. The poems become simpler and more powerful and they really really speak to me. Everything from this point on is amazing! (What happened in 1961???)

Two of the last poems in the book are two of the most powerful:

Always The Same (1961)
Slowly, Prometheus
bleeds to life
in his huge loneliness.

You, for whom
his bowels are exposed,
go about your affairs

dying a little every day
from the inside out
almost imperceptibly

till the late decades when
women go hysterical
and men are dumbly frightened

and far away, like the sea
Prometheus sings on
“like a battle-song after a battle.”


The Roofwalker (1961)
--for Denise Levertov

Over the half-finished houses
night comes. The builders
stand on the roof. It is
quiet after the hammers,
the pulleys hang slack. 5
Giants, the roofwalkers,
on a listing deck, the wave
of darkness about to break
on their heads. The sky
is a torn sail where figures 10
pass magnified, shadows
on a burning deck.

I feel like them up there:
exposed, larger than life,
and due to break my neck. 15

Was it worth while to lay--
with infinite exertion--
a roof I can't live under?
--All those blueprints,
closings of gaps 20
measurings, calculations?
A life I didn't choose
chose me: even
my tools are the wrong ones
for what I have to do. 25
I'm naked, ignorant,
a naked man fleeing
across the roofs
who could with a shade of difference
be sitting in the lamplight 30
against the cream wallpaper
reading--not with indifference--
about a naked man
fleeing across the roofs.

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the earliest work by Rich that I have read. It is an obvious touchstone in her evolution on her way to her later award-winning work.

The women, and their marriages, portrayed in this collection are unhappy. The marriages of not sites of connection, only obligation. Motherhood as well. These are often angry poems, angry with the expectations heaped on women and eager for change, evolution.

I prefer the later work, but there are some stellar moments here. I should come back and put some quotes in, because Rich is a gem.

[Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

Snapshots of a Daugher-in-Law is a bad-ass symphony for women.

A poem of a woman with no name, no identity, no self. She's merely a position, a title, and a subordinate at that . A woman under the thumb of her husband's mother. And both women suffocating in patriarchal society, sacrificing their dreams to serve their husbands and families. Ultimately, the poem blossoms into a full-on riot for women's rights.

And in it I've found the script for my next tattoo. I won't reveal that here.

[Everett · Rating 3 out of 5]

A few poems really stood out ("Passing On"), while I trudged through the rest impatiently. Upon rereading, my impatience seemed to have had a purpose-In short, Adrienne Rich bores me to no end.

[Hubert · Rating 5 out of 5]

A rich, daring collection of classic modernist poetry. Will need to reread to really get at what Rich is going for.

[amelia · Rating 4 out of 5]

read the poem 'snapshots of a daughter-in-law'

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

What do you look for down there
in the cracks of the pavement? Or up there
between the pineapple and the acanthus leaf
in that uninspired ornament? Odysseus
wading half-naked out of the shrubbery
like a god, dead serious among those at play,
could hardly be more out of it. In school
we striped your back with chalk, you all oblivious,
your eyes harnessed by a transparent stand
reaching the other side of things, or down
like a wellchain to the centre of the earth.
Now with those same eyes you pull the
pavements up like old linoleum,
arches of triumph start to liquefy
minutes after you slowly turn away.

- The Absent-Minded are Always to Blame, pg. 17

* * *

The month's eye blurs.
The winter's lungs are cracked.
Along bloated gutters race,
shredded, your injured legions,
the waste of our remorseless search.
Your old, unuttered names are holes
worn in our skins
through which we feel from time to time
abrasive wind.

Those who are loved live poorly and in danger.
We who were loved will never
unlive that crippling fever.
A day returns, a certain weather
splatters the panes, and we
once more stare in the eye of our first failure.

- After a Sentence in "Malte Laurids Brigge", pg. 20

* * *

Now, not a tear begun,
we sit here in your kitchen,
spent, you see, already.
You are swollen till you strain
this house and the whole sky.
You, whom we so often
succeeded in ignoring!
You are puffed up in death
like a corpse pulled from the sea;
we groan beneath your weight.
And yet you were a leaf,
a straw blown on the bed,
you had long since become
crisp as a dead insect.
What is it, if not you,
that settles on us now
like satin you pulled down
over our bridal heads?
What rises in our throats
like food you prodded in?
Nothing could be enough.
You breathe upon us now
through solid assertions
of yourself: teaspoons, goblets,
seas of carpet, a forest
of old plants to be watered,
an old man in an adjoining
room to be touched and fed.
And all this universe
dares us to lay a finger
anywhere, save exactly
as you would wish it done.

- A Woman Mourned by Daughters, pg. 35

* * *

I can't name love now
without naming its object -
this the final measure
of those flintspark years
when one believed
one's flash innate.
Today I swear
only in the sun's eye
do I take fire.

- First Thing, pg. 47

* * *

I've said: I wouldn't ever
keep a cat, a dog,
a bird -
chiefly because
I'd rather love my equals.
Today, turning
in the fog of my mind,
I knew, the thing I really
couldn't stand in the house
is a woman
with a mindful of fog
and bloodletting claws
and the nerves of a bird
and the nightmares of a dog.

- Apology, pg. 51

* * *

Two people in a room, speaking harshly.
One gets up, goes out to walk.
(That is the man.)
The other goes into the next room
and ashes the dishes, cracking one.
(That is the woman.)
It gets dark outside.
The children quarrel in the attic.
Sh has no blood left in her heart.
The man comes back to a dark house.
The only light is in the attic.
He has forgotten his key.
He rings at his own door
and hears sobbing on the stairs.
The lights go on in the house.
The door closes behind him.
Outside, separate as minds,
the starts too come alight.

- Novella, pg. 57

* * *

Lashes of white light
binding another hailcloud -
the whole onset all over
bursting against our faces,
sputtering like dead holly
fired in a grate:
And the birds go mad
potted by grapeshot
while the sun shines
in one quarter of heaven
and the rainbow
breaks out its enormous flag -
oily, unnegotiable -
over the sack-draped backs
of the cattle in their kingdom.

- Peace, pg. 62

[Professor Typewriter · Rating 2 out of 5]

There is no doubt in my mind that Adrienne Rich was an influential 20th century American poet and that is why I wanted to like this book more. The issue I had with this particular volume was that it was an imbalance work overall. The poems in which Rich imitated other poems fell flat. The poems that were original stood out for me. This is a good volume to read if you would like to trace the evolution of Rich’s writing career.

[Edward Ferrari · Rating 4 out of 5]

First time reading early Rich. Will come back again for "Peace," "The Afterwake," and a few others. Had no idea Rich had so much truck with metrical convention.

[Magali · Rating 5 out of 5]

I kinda want to learn some of those poems to be able to recite them at will, that's how much I loved that collection.

[Lisa M. · Rating 2 out of 5]

First, I was really turned off by the cover of this book. I had no idea what was on it while I read it. As I look at the icon above this review, I realize it may be a skull surrounded by fabric ... ? I don't know. I also really disliked the page design in this collection. Each poem is topped with a small graphic. At the end of each poem is a line break and the year it was written. I don't really have a problem with that information, but a little more space would be appreciated.

I have read two other collections by Adrienne Rich - one from the 1970s, and one from the 2000s. I really loved both because they were able to connect the personal, the political, and some poetic talent for some of my favorite poetry. This collection is from the late 50s and early 60s. A few poems stood out to me in that way - the title poem, for example, describes a modern woman's struggle between the path she's taken, which she was expected to do - and her dreams. A few other poems attempted political messages but ended up amateurish and didactic.

The other long, numerated poem, "Readings of History," was very good. The poems that describe a marriage's breakdown in terms of ice or winter - "Attention," "End of an Era," and "Break Down" intrigued me. This poetry collection also explores the concept of the nature of time and growing older.

There were very few poems that really grabbed me from beginning to end in this collection (the simple "Novella" really stood out to me - but that's probably because I can relate to it, to some degree.) In the poems that remained, a few had great sparks - smart word choice, great lines. My major complaint is that Rich dawdles too much in the abstract here. Some poems took too much effort to fully understand, and weren't very rewarding afterwards.

Her punctuation did not bother me here, as it did in other collections - but that may be my growth as a poetry reader. Otherwise, the actual quality of the writing was ok - only the topics were dull. I don't think I'll be pursuing more of her ear work any time soon

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

For me, this collection of work feels monumental, especially given the decade in which the poems were worked on and published. Beginning with the title of the book, which defines a married woman in relation to another woman instead of to a man, these poems challenge the popular culture notion of the fifties housewife, doing her housework in white pumps and pearls. But, even that summation trivializes the searing work Ms. Rich does with her economical language and intricate images. A must-read for anyone who calls themselves a feminist.

[Michael Vagnetti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Who’s soft? Not here. Tough, sober diction, not out to please. If some art pretends to use a mythological hammer, and hoists it heroically with two hands, this poetry, in defiance, reads like the author is using a real one – and pulling out nails. What does it feel like? Looking over the resulting half-demolished wall, as one might do in combat. Time has started to chafe. There are a catalog of things to say here when you’ve thought sharply about gender and realize, vastly, what’s not right. There’s also building: this is art that creates what could be, and not just asks for it.

[Gretchen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I'm bad at reading poetry.

[michele ✡︎]

:/ nothing's more disappointing than thinking you're gonna be obsessed with a poet and then ending up being so not obsessed with the poet :/

[Oisín · Rating 4 out of 5]

8/10