Adrienne Rich's Poetry and Prose (Norton Critical Editions)
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.Albert Gelpi is William Robertson Coe Professor of American Literature at Stanford University, where he has also taught since 1968. His books include Emily Dickinson: The Mind of the Poet, The Tenth Muse: The Psyche of the American Poet, and, most recently, A Coherent Splendor: The American Poetic Renaissance, 1910-1950. He is the editor of Wallace Stevens: The Poetics of Modernism and Denise Levertov: Selected Criticism and for a decade edited Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture.Barbara Charlesworth Gelpi is Professor of English at Stanford University, where she has taught since 1968. She is the author of Shelleyís Goddess: Maternity, Language, Subjectivity and Dark Passages: The Decadent Consciousness in Victorian Literature, as well as numerous articles on, mainly, feminist and psychological literature. She is an editor of several important volumes, including Feminist Theory: A Critique of Ideologies and Women and Poverty.