The will to change;: Poems 1968-1970

by Adrienne Rich

Hardcover. Very good condition. From the collection of poet Gavin Ewart, with his name penned on F E P and dated February 1973. In unclipped dust jacket with tanning to spine, and slight shelf-wear front and back. Cover bumped to spine ends. Pages and text fine. RB

Genres: Poetry, Female Authors, American, Nonfiction

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1971

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

[Adriana Scarpin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Uma ode ao cinema, Não tem como não amar.

[Ada · Rating 4 out of 5]

Combinar la lectura de la biografia amb la lectura dels seus llibres és preciós. Veure com evoluciona la seva poesia al costat de com evoluciona la seva vida (les seves experiències, la seva ment, les seves conviccions...) és enriquidor.

[Craig Werner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Update: Re-re-re-re (etc.) reading confirms what I've known for a while: The Will to Change deepens with each engagement; one of the books that's most important to me. Teaching it in a freshman seminar on the Sixties--finally the right choice for the last slot on the syllabus (smile)--made me more aware of how fundamental it is to understanding both the chaos and the sense of possibility that defined the time.

As with Leaflets, I'm going to keep my original review of Will to Change in place and add a few comments, mostly quoting some crucial lines, that reflect my most recent reading. I'll keep coming back to those two books as long as I'm reading.

Original review:
If you want a sense of the intellectual and cultural chaos of the late 1960s, this is as good a place to start as any. Like Leaflets, The Will to Change shows Adrienne Rich in a moment of tumultuous transition, grappling with the cross-currents of the late 1960s, doing her damndest to imagine a new world into being. She'd obviously been watching and was highly influenced by Godard's films and, like Godard, she was committed to breaking her own perception down as close to basics as possible (see "Images for Godard," "Pierrot le Fou," and the long closing poem "Shooting Script.") Issues of sex and gender, while present, are less central than in either Leaflets or her next volume, the feminist classic Diving Into the Wreck. Rather, there's a sense of living in the midst of a sick civilization dominated by money and hypocrisy, one which dehumanizes everyone. She's determined to change, whatever the cost. Within the next few years, the direction of that change would become clearer.

New reflections:
The final lines of "Shooting Script," the brilliant sequence that closes The Will to Change, are about as clear as a time of chaos allowed: "To pull yourself up by your own roots: to eat the last meal in your old/ neighborhood." That sense of finality, the end of something, recurs throughout the book. In "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning" (amazingly, as powerful in its own way as Donne's poem): "A last attempt: the language is a dialect called metaphor," leading to the final line "To do something very common, in my own way." The musing over the relationship between language, dialect, metaphor--something I wrote about in my book Adrienne Rich: The Poet and Her Critics--leads to an even more central delving into image and process. In "Images for Godard": "Interior monologue of the poet:/ the notes for the poem are the only poem." Godard's the most obvious of the aesthetic/political relatives on Rich's mind at this stage, joined by Leroi Jones, Simone Weil, Wittgenstein. She insists that politics have to be felt, not thought, lived, not abstracted: In the final poem in "The Blue Ghazals" sequence: "The moment when a feeling enters the body/ is political. This touch is political," and in "Our Whole Life": "his whole body a cloud of pain/and there are no words for this/ except himself."

In The Will to Change, Rich is looking for those words, intimating. Preparing for the dive into the wreck.

[Alex Wexelman · Rating 4 out of 5]

In "The Blue Ghazals" there's a moment where Adrienne Rich becomes the poet we know her as. She writes, "The moment when a feeling enters the body is political." The personal is political and these poems find Rich angry, fearful, politically engaged, and begging to be seen and heard. Her marriage to Alfred H. Conrad was falling apart and the text directly addresses this as she begs him to, "Tell me what we are going through." While her earlier work is thick and rhymes, these poems are free verse, loose, and cover themes like white guilt and censorship (book burning).

Rich is best in the last part, "Shooting Script," which the book's jacket calls a, "two-part essay that invents a new poetic form." I'm dubious of that claim but it does feel like something unique to Rich's writing. Something more free and searching. To paraphrase her here, she is entering the poems to leave the room—and, to find herself in them.

[Magali · Rating 3 out of 5]

For me it was an uneven collection of poems, I connected with some, did not with most. I don't really know why. I felt like it lacked the strenght I find in Rich's poems I love the most. Also some of the poems' themes were not clear to me.

[Jessika]

"Planetarium" and "The Burning of Paper Instead of Children" are still so freaking good. Not sure what prompted this poetry wave but I'll enjoy it while it lasts.

[sunshine · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first Adrienne rich!!! And it was BEAUTIFUL

“The books we borrowed trying to read each other’s minds paperbacks piling on both sides of the fireplace and piled beside the bed“ page 33

[Bradley · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was excited to get into this collection because a lot of Rich's work has influenced me deeply. However, I found much of this confusing, obscure, and referencing issues that happened then (which is no fault to her that I'm reading it in 2015). Still, she is great at using unorthodox word pairings and creating strong imagery. She is a master of craft. I just was uninspired and left confused.

[Stewart Lindstrom · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this may actually be a five-star collection, but that I'm missing some of the references. Rich was an incredible poet, and the work here is no exception. But many here are in direct response to the films of Jean-Luc Godard, a filmmaker whose work I am only generally familiar with.

Still great if you haven't seen any of Godard's films, however. Reads like a surrealist diary of the tumultuous '60s.

[Richard]

I like these poems. They describe a mental word I was too young to experience but whose contours are familiar to me as a child born at the time Rich wrote them. These are the poems of a women deeply engaged with the issues surrounding the war in Vietnam, civil rights, and feminism. The poems convey a sensitive mind envisioning new possibilities - some of which excite even as they unsettle her.

[Molly · Rating 4 out of 5]

*3.5 stars*

I always find it difficult to review poetry; it's so subjective. Some of these poems really spoke to me, others not so much. Overall, this is a beautiful collection and I recommend it to anyone who appreciates Rich's work.

[Noodles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Revolutionary and beautiful. I thought Rich wrote this at the time she embraced her identity as a lesbian since some of the poems seemed to allude to sapphic themes but this was before. Very interesting.

[Professor Typewriter · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Adrienne Rich is that admired and celebrated comes into her own in this volume of poetry. Superb diction, masterful stanzas. This is a must read volume for anyone interested in American poetry in the 20th century.

[Erin · Rating 2 out of 5]

This will certainly appeal to some readers. The metaphor was a little too knee-deep for me. I prefer poets with simpler voices but I do think I learned some things by reading this collection.

[Justine · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 Stars!

[Sarah Gamal · Rating 5 out of 5]

first time I read a poem 5 times in a row and only stop cause I had something else to do

[faith adams-michaels · Rating 4 out of 5]

the more i love my life the more i love you

[Glen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I know enough about Rich to respect her a great deal, and I know enough about my limitations as an intelligent commentator on poetry not to say very much here. Suffice it to say that with a couple of exceptions ("The Burning of Paper Instead of Children" and "Images for Godard"), most of these poems did not move me, the images just sort of flowed by. I understand the historical significance of this collection, but the subjective element was somehow lacking for me, though I certainly appreciated her devotion to craft even in those poems that did not resonate for me personally.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

My second favorite volume of Adrienne Rich's poetry.

[Tyler Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was introduced to this poet last year, and have not even made it through this one book yet; I end up re-reading the poems I've already read because I find so much more in each one every time.

[Bill Bogert]

a major influence on my verse

[Greta · Rating 3 out of 5]

Adrienne Rich is an interesting person & poet, and offers an interesting collection of her work in this book.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rich creates a space with her poetry and fills it with beauty and newness.

Some poems deeply moved me; others flowed over me. Either way, it was an experience.

[Cats W. Bats, Esq. · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5/5

You really can't go wrong with Rich.