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Adrienne Rich 2
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Adrienne Rich 2
 

I love Adrienne Rich’s poems, and one of my favourite collections of hers is The Will To Change (1971).
I’ve been reading it again. I know now that the only way to read anything is again
The title is taken from a John Donne poem.

A VALEDICTION FOBIDDING MOURNING

My swirling wants. Your frozen lips.
The grammar turned and attacked me.
Themes, written under duress.
Emptiness of the notations.

They gave me a drug that slowed the healing of wounds.

I want you to see this before I leave;
the experience of repetition as death
the failure of criticism to locate the pain
the poster in the bus that said;
my bleeding is under control.

A red plant in a cemetery of plastic wreaths.

A last attempt; the language is a dialect called metaphor.
These images go unglossed; hair, glacier, flashlight.
When I think of a landscape I am thinking of a time.
When I talk of taking a trip I mean forever.
I could say; those mountains have a meaning
but further than that I could not say.

To do something very common, in my own way.



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