Customer Reviews

Adrienne Rich's Poetry and Prose (Norton Critical Editions)

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I purchased this book for my research of Adrienne Rich's work. The poetry and reviews included, more than contribute to the paper. The critiques whet my appetite for more. This issue will hold my interest and help grow my style for many years. It invites me to read, read, read--write,write, write.

This book arrived in fairly good condition. A couple of pages were dogeared, but otherwise it was fine. As far as the text goes, it is very good, though quite obscure, poetry. You need a teacher to help you read it, and fortunately I have one. The footnotes were uneven.

I'm currently teaching a six week course in Adrienne Rich's poetry and this book is excellent. It provides a good selection of her poems, plus significant prose pieces. If students choose to do so, they can read the reviews of her books, some critical essays and an interview. It's limited only in that it doesn't cover her more recent publications.

I had to read this for an English Lit class, and it was great. I enjoyed it so much that semester that I didn't even sell it back! But I haven't read it since, so maybe it isn't that great unless you are forced to read it. As required reading, it really is one of the best and most interesting book of poems you'll likely read. For leisure.. maybe not.

Oh! By the way, the lesbian undertones were a great and interesting surprise! And also made writing about feminist theory REALLY EASY.

Not merely a wonderful and incredibly courageous poet; oh, no. She is also a brilliant and challenging essayist. Most famous for "The Hermit's Scream", her other prose is absolutely startling in its originality and courage. This book is a threat to white males everywhere. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

My copy is missing pages 225 to 276, comprising the last four essays in the Prose section: "Blood, Bread and Poetry: The Location of the Poet," "The Genesis of 'Yom Kippur 1984'," "Adrienne Rich: The Interview with David Montenegro," and "Swarthmore College Commencement: June 1, 1992." Must have been a bad printing batch. Caveat emptor.

She must be one of the favorite poets of English Lit. teachers, and one of the worst. Norton can do so much better with other poets and other authors. There are plenty of titles I would like to buy that Norton simply has ignored, and here we are with yet another edition of adrienne rich's poor talents and even poorer verse. What a waste.

Adrienne Rich has to be the most over-rated poet in history. Her work would be completely forgotten if it was judged as poetry, but because she has been adopted as the ideological idol of PC fanatics everywhere, she has become an untouchable icon of the present. Rich is best compared, intellectually, to the literary drudges of Soviet Russia, who extolled the glories of the people for the Communist Party. The diffrence, obviously, is that Rich is not embraced by the State, but by the buddy system that is academic feminism. This volume, complete with the breathless worship -- oh, sorry, critical scholarly attention -- of the editor, is a very fine presentation of what is, for all practical purposes, the work of a transient figure whose prominence is entirely dependent on the current PC state of the American academic establishment. If you wandered to this book because it claims to be poetry, why not skip it and try someone with some soul adn some real poetic talent?

Oct. 5: She is presented with prestigious Lannan Literary Award..for $100,000 for a job in writing,well.

These poems might as well have been the dictated sounds of gas bubbles coming up through the innards of a body dragged out of a lake. Rich is bitter, stale like old medical encyclopedias uprooted from their post in grandma's attic. If that's what you're into, have at it. Me, I'm not into mothball verse.