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 a National Book Award for poetry for Tonight, No Poetry Will Serve, a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant in 1994, and a National Book Award for poetry in 1974 for Diving Into the Wreck. That volume, published in 1973, is considered her masterwork. Ms. Rich’s other 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 2006, Rich was awarded the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters by the National Book Foundation. In 2010, she was honored with The Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry's Lifetime Recognition Award.
This Norton Critical Edition presents the work of one of America's foremost poets. It moves well beyond the scope of its predecessor, Adrienne Rich's Poetry (1975), in giving proper recognition to Rich's extraordinary achievements in both poetry and prose in recent years. The result is a judiciously edited, sensibly annotated volume ideally suited for classroom study of one of our most distinguished working writers.More
"Adrienne Rich's new prose collection could have been titled The Essential Rich."—Women's Review of BooksMore
Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.More
That Adrienne Rich is a not only a major American poet but an incisive, compelling prose writer is made clear once again by this collection, in which she continues to explore the social and political context of her life and art.More
More than 200 poems collected from Adrienne Rich's first six books, plus a dozen others of those decades.More
"When does a life bend towards freed? grasp its direction" asks Adrienne Rich in Dark Fields of the Republic, her major new work. Her explorations go to the heart of democracy and love, and the historical and present endangerment of both.More
In her seventh volume of poetry, Adrienne Rich searches to reclaim—to discover—what has been forgotten, lost, or unexplored.More
“Certain lines had become like incantations to me, words I’d chanted to myself through sorrow and confusion” —Cheryl Strayed, WildMore
A reissue of the classic Adrienne Rich selection, revised and expanded to cover the entirety of her career, with a new Introduction.More
"A challenging collection that should more than satisfy [Rich's] large and loyal following."—Washington Post Book WorldMore
“Adrienne Rich is the Blake of American letters.”—Nadine GordimerMore
The final volume of poems assembled by America’s most powerful and distinctive poetic voice.More
Leaflets is Adrienne Rich's fifth book of poems. It contains twenty-eight new poems, five adaptations of Dutch, Yiddish, and Russian poets, and a sequence of seventeen poems loosely based on the ghazal, a common form in Middle Eastern poetic tradition; these ghazals comprise a kind of notebook of a month in the summer of 1968.More
"An impressive new volume. . . . Rich's admirers will recognize the complex symbiosis between the activist and the maker of new language, each propelling, describing, provoking the other's words."—Publishers WeeklyMore
Adrienne Rich's influential and landmark investigation concerns both the experience and the institution of motherhood.More
In this collection of prose writings, one of America's foremost poets and feminist theorists reflects upon themes that have shaped her life and work.More
In the traditional of great literary manifestos, Norton is proud to present this powerful work by Adrienne Rich.More
"Trust Rich, a clarion poet of conscience, to get the fractured timbre of the times just right."--Booklist, starred reviewMore
“Rich’s lyrics are powerful and mournful, drenched in memory.” —San Francisco ChronicleMore
Time's Power is a new book by a major American poet, and a landmark in a distinguished ongoing career.More
“Rich’s poetry itself is a mirror, reflecting the truths about humanity this discerning poet has come to understand.”—BooklistMore
Expanded Edition
America's enduring poet of conscience reflects on the proven and potential role of poetry in contemporary politics and life.More
“We are in the presence here of a major American poet whose voice at mid-century in her own life is increasingly marked by moral passion.”—New York Times Book ReviewMore
"The Will to Change is an extraordinary book of poems...It has the urgency of a prisoner's journal: patient, laconic, eloquent, as if determined thoughts were set down in stolen moments." —David Kalstone in The New York Times Book ReviewMore
A major American poet faces her own native land, her own life, and the result is a volume of compelling, transforming poems.More