National Poetry Month: Adrienne Rich

Today we're concluding National Poetry Month with poems from Adrienne Rich. She was an influential American poet, essayist, and feminist whose work explored themes of identity, politics, power, and social justice. Over the course of her long career, Rich’s poetry evolved from formal, structured verse to more experimental and free forms, reflecting her growing commitment to activism and radical thought. She is known for blending the personal with the political, using poetry as a means to challenge oppression, particularly in relation to gender, sexuality, and race. Most of her work is new to me, but as soon as I read this poem, I knew it was the one I wanted to share.

This poem movingly depicts a relationship. Rich describes how she and her husband venture into the Nevada desert to protest against a nuclear test being carried out by the United States government while contemplating their marriage at the same time. Once, the poet’s marriage was a happy one, filled with music and cookies, with movies and "afternoons on the riverbank". This togetherness is now a thing of the past. Their relationship is now characterized by an emotional distance, a "silence" at the heart of things. The couple have come to the desert not only to protest against nuclear weapons, but also to confront this silence that’s eating away at their relationship.

Trying to Talk With a Man

by Adrienne Rich

Out in this desert we are testing bombs,

that’s why we came here.

Sometimes I feel an underground river
forcing its way between deformed cliffs
an acute angle of understanding
moving itself like a locus of the sun
into this condemned scenery.

What we’ve had to give up to get here –
whole LP collections, films we starred in
playing in the neighbourhoods, bakery windows
full of dry, chocolate-filled Jewish cookies,
the language of love-letters, of suicide notes,
afternoons on the riverbank
pretending to be children

Coming out to this desert
we meant to change the face of
driving among dull green succulents
walking at noon in the ghost town
surrounded by a silence

that sounds like the silence of the place
except that it came with us
and is familiar
and everything we were saying until now
was an effort to blot it out –
coming out here we are up against it

Out here I feel more helpless
with you than without you
You mention the danger
and list the equipment
we talk of people caring for each other
in emergencies – laceration, thirst –
but you look at me like an emergency

Your dry heat feels like power
your eyes are stars of a different magnitude
they reflect lights that spell out: EXIT
when you get up and pace the floor

talking of the danger
as if it were not ourselves
as if we were testing anything else.

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Rich, Adrienne. "Trying to Talk With a Man." Diving into the Wreck. New York: Norton, 1973.  

You can read more about the poet here and here.

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Be sure to check in with Kym, Kat, Sarah, and Vera (there is a linkup below) for more poetry today. Thank you for joining and reading our celebration of National Poetry Month. (And remember that any time is good for poetry, not just Thursdays in April!)

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