In her six-decade long writing career Adrienne Rich (19292012) addressed, with sagacity and probing honesty, most of the significant issues of her lifetime. A poet of finely tuned craft, she won numerous prizes, awards, and honorary degrees, and famously rejected the prestigious National Medal for the Arts in 1997. She wrote twenty-five volumes of poetry and seven non-fiction books as she combined the roles of poet, scholar, theorist, and activist. Rich wrote passionately and powerfully about major 20th and early 21st century concerns such as feminism, racism, sexism, the Vietnam War, Marxism, militarism, the growing income disparities in the U.S., and other social issues. Her works ask important questions about how we should act, and what we should believe. They imagine new ways to deal with the social and political challenges of the twentieth century. Setting her work in the context of her life and American politics and culture during her lifetime, this book explores Richs poetic and personal journey from conservative, dutiful follower of cultural and poetic traditions to challenging questioner and critic, from passivity and powerlessness to activist, theorist, and acclaimed poet of the oppositional imagination.

Acknowledgments; Abbreviations; Introduction: Adrienne Rich: Poet of the Oppositional Imagination; A Challenging Author; The Plan of this Book; Sources: A Brief Biographical Introduction to Adrienne Rich; Selected List of Memorials and Celebrations of Her Life; Early Poems; A Change of World (1951); The Diamond Cutters (1955); Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law (1963); Necessities of Life (1966); Leaflets (1969); The Will to Change (1971); Later Poems, Part One: Feminism 19731981; Reappropriating the Heroic Journey Myth; Diving into the Wreck (1973); The Dream of a Common Language (1978); A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far (1981); Later Poems, Part II: 19842012; The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New 19501984 (1984); Your Native Land, Your Life (1986); Times Power: Poems 19851988 (1989); An Atlas of the Difficult World: Poems 19881991 (1992); Dark Fields of the Republic: Poems 19911995 (1995); Rich as Editor: The Best American Poetry of 1996; Midnight Salvage: Poems 19951998 (1999); Fox: Poems 19982000 (2001); The School among the Ruins: Poems 20002004 (2004); Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth: Poems 20042006 (2007); Tonight No Poetry Will Serve: Poems 20072010 (2011); Later Poems (20102012); Adrienne Richs Prose: The Work of a Feminist Thinker; Motherhood; Thematic Discussions of Richs Prose; Teaching Adrienne Rich: Many Approaches to Teaching Rich; Education and Pedagogy; Teaching Richs Poetry; Selected Resources for Studying and Teaching Rich: Books and Websites Arranged by Subject; Conclusion; Appendix: Adrienne Cecile Rich Chronology; Bibliography.