Essential Essays: Culture, Politics, and the Art of Poetry - Softcover

Rich, Adrienne

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393355136 ISBN 13: 9780393355130

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019

Synopsis

A New York Times Critics’ Pick

A career-spanning selection of the lucid, courageous, and boldly political prose of National Book Award winner Adrienne Rich.

Demonstrating the lasting brilliance of her voice and her prophetic vision, Essential Essays showcases Adrienne Rich’s singular ability to unite the political, personal, and poetical. The essays selected here by feminist scholar Sandra M. Gilbert range from the 1960s to 2006, emphasizing Rich’s lifelong intellectual engagement and fearless prose exploration of feminism, social justice, poetry, race, homosexuality, and identity.

About this title

About the Author:

Widely read, widely anthologized, widely interviewed, and widely taught, Adrienne Rich (1929–2012) was for decades among the most influential writers of the feminist movement and one of the best-known American public intellectuals. She wrote two dozen volumes of poetry and more than a half-dozen of prose. Her constellation of honors includes two National Book Awards, a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant, and a Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters by the National Book Foundation. Ms. Rich’s volumes of poetry include The Dream of a Common Language, A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far, An Atlas of the Difficult World, The School Among the Ruins, and Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth. Her prose includes the essay collections On Lies, Secrets, and Silence; Blood, Bread, and Poetry; an influential essay, “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence,” and the nonfiction book Of Woman Born, which examines the institution of motherhood as a socio-historic construct. In 2010, she was honored with The Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry's Lifetime Recognition Award.

Sandra M. Gilbert is a distinguished literary critic, professor, and poet. She lives in Berkeley, CA.

Review:

“A peerless pleasure.”
- New York Times

“Rich offers a powerful reminder of the continuous self-reflection required to fight ignorance―one's own and others'.... A profound and beautiful call to think, and feel, and fight.”
- New York Times Book Review

“[Essential Essays] shows us a woman in full command of her intellect and art.... [Rich] is more relevant than ever.”
- San Francisco Chronicle

“Reading [Essential Essays], one is struck by the breadth of Rich’s research, the force of her arguments, the elegance and honesty of her personal writing.”
- Bookforum

“Feminist poet and literary critic Gilbert skillfully selects examples that convey the considerable breadth of Rich’s purview as an essayist and exhibit her characteristic strategy of rejecting surface explanations and turning experience around in the light of subjective truth. Approachable, effective excerpts afford breathtaking encounters with genius.”
- Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Vibrant.... [Rich’s] essays, always provocative, clear, and packed with insights, are wise, refreshingly humane, and well worth reading.”
- Publishers Weekly

“An excellent guide to living for anyone invested in the feminist struggle today, or the struggle for self-determination and equality more broadly.”
- Pacific Standard

“This collection refreshes an esteemed opinion of Rich’s invaluable contributions to poetry and feminist thought.”
- New York Journal of Books

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 0393355136
• ISBN 13: 9780393355130
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352
• Editor: Gilbert Sandra M.