Customer Reviews

Arts of the Possible: Essays and Conversations

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Please ignore the review above. It's author seems to have missed thepoint entirely. This book is essential reading, as all of Rich's books are. One of our greatest writers.

If you have ever thought about the relationship between art and politics, or art and social justice, Adrienne Rich's collection of essays and conversations is a must read.

In "When We Dead Awaken" (Chapt 1) - Interweaving prose and poetry, Rich demonstrates how she slowly came to terms with her identity as a female poet - a process she termed, "awakening of dead or sleeping consciousness." A process that would seem vital for any oppressed group, Rich explains how after years of sleepwalking, under the direction of men, women were slowly "awakening," re-visioning their past and drawing conclusions on the present.

The book alone is worth reading simply for the 3rd chapter, a philosophical and feminist perspective on lying. "Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying" is a unique and compelling treatise on the causes and effects of lying.

Every once in a while I wonder why, in this age, people still utter the word "feminist" as though it were an obscenity. Then I pick up one of Adrienne Rich's books, and I think, Oh yeah. That's why.

Arts of the Possible purports to be a text on aesthetics, but it winds up more of a text on Adrienne Rich. The "essays" include "Notes" for several talks she's given, and unlike most essays titled "Notes," these really are just her notes, without any effort to flesh them in; the full text of other speeches; some singularly unenlightening "conversations," where she displays her disheartening lack of an understanding of literature; and a few legitimate essays, most that have appeared in other anthologies. In fact, the title piece to her previous collected prose, Blood, Bread and Poetry, is here.

Her argumentative strategy mostly consists of rambling a bit about herself, especially the horrors of growing up in a house filled with books of poetry by white men, making some vague, unsupported, barely-arguable generalizations ("the reading of poetry in an elite academic institution is supposed to lead you. . . not toward a criticism of society, but toward a professional career in which the anatomy of poems is studied dispassionately"--since when?), drawing even more generalized conclusions, and then ranting about the wickedness of capitalism or patriarchy. Often, she takes swings at big-business publishing's utter lack of an aesthetic and slavery to the bottom line, claiming that the larger houses print nothing of worth. What press is this book on? Norton, a behemoth if there ever was one. What press put out her last couple collecteds? Norton. What press has she published just about every volume she's ever spewed out? Norton.

Intriguing.

Many pieces hint at the theory most expounded in "Defying the Space that Separates," the reprinted introduction from the abominable 1996 Best American Poetry: poor people make better art than rich people do. It's a peculiarly Protestant notion (peculiar especially because she makes so much of her oppressed and suppressed Jewish heritage). Sure, you're starving, your teeth are falling out because you can't get decent health care, and you had to sell your baby to an infertile couple from Napersville just to pay your back rent, but you do some really powerful paintings. Not only is this ludicrous on its face, but it's made especially so considering Rich's admitted upbringing in the upper-middle class, attendance at prestigious universities, and current residence in a posh San Francisco neighborhood. She has made quite a living on fashionable compassion for a class with which she's had precious little contact.

T.S. Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and a host of miserable but financially-comfortable artists dating from the time of the Italian Rennaissance would definitely disagree with her theories, as would I. Having grown up in close contact with plenty of trailer parks and inner-city ghettos, I can guarantee that most the poor--like most the rest of America--are perfectly happy with their singing fish plaques and Jerry Springer Too Hot for TV videos. Many middle- to upper-class white Americans who feel guilty about their own privilege have proposed that disenfranchisement leads to better art. They haven't been right either.

I would put forth that this rhetoric is, in fact, dangerous to the underappreciated sects Rich claims to represent. Works like that 96 Best, which utterly sacrifice artistry and craft to present a political agenda undermine the very cause it purports to promote. If the poor, gays and lesbians, prison inmates, people of marginalized race groups, and the like are represented by bad work, the established hegemony will have every excuse to exclude them from the canon.

Rich's prose occasionally breaks into moments of genuine music, but for the most part it's painfully self-aggrandizing, and at times even offensively so. Arts of the Possible feels like nothing so much as a last-ditch effort by a woman who fears she'll be remembered as a radical instead of a writer, or worse, forgotten entirely.

Those of us who take both our politics and our art seriously can only hope that last will indeed come to pass, and that our work will be considered fairly, out of the ugly shadow writers like Rich currently cast on anyone whose muse has a political bent.

Every once in a while I wonder why, in this age, people still utter the word "feminist" as though it were an obscenity. Then I pick up one of Adrienne Rich's books, and I think, Oh yeah. That's why.

Arts of the Possible purports to be a text on aesthetics, but it winds up more of a text on Adrienne Rich. The "essays" include "Notes" for several talks she's given, and unlike most essays titled "Notes," these really are just her notes, without any effort to flesh them in; the full text of other speeches; some singularly unemlightening "conversations," where she displays her disheartening lack of an understanding of literature; and a few legitimate essays, most that have appeared in other anthologies. In fact, the title piece to her previous collected prose, Blood, Bread and Poetry, is here.

Her argumentative strategy mostly consists of rambling a bit about herself, especially the horrors of growing up in a house filled with books of poetry by white men, making some vague, barely-arguable statements of generalization ("the reading of poetry in an elite academic institution is supposed to lead you. . . not toward a criticism of society, but toward a professional career in which the anatomy of poems is studied dispassionately"--huh?), drawing even more generalized conclusions, and then ranting about the wickedness of capitalism or patriarchy. Often, she takes swings at big-business publishing's utter lack of an aesthetic and slavery to the bottom line, claiming that the larger houses print nothing of worth. What press is this book on? Norton. What press put out her last couple collecteds? Norton. What press has she published just about every volume she's ever spewed out? Norton.

Intriguing.

In many pieces she hints at the theory most expounded in "Defying the Space that Separates," the reprinted inntroduction from the abominable 1996 Best American Poetry: poor people make better art than rich people do. It's a peculiarly Protestant notion (peculiar especially because she makes so much of her oppressed and suppressed Jewish heritage). Sure, you're starving, your teeth are falling out because you can't get decent health care, and you had to sell your baby to an infertile couple from Napersville just to pay your back rent, but you do some really powerful paintings. Not only is this ludicrous on its face, but it's made especially so considering Rich's admitted upbringing in the upper-middle class, attendance at prestigious universities, and current residence in a posh San Francisco neighborhood. She has made quite a living on fashionable compassion for a class with which she's had precious little contact.

T.S. Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and a host of miserable but financially-comfortable artists dating from the time of the Italian Rennaissance would definitely disagree with her theories, as would I. Having grown up in close contact with plenty of trailer parks and inner-city ghettos, I can guarantee that most the poor--like most the rest of America--are perfectly happy with their singing fish plaques and Jerry Springer Too Hot for TV videos. Many middle- to upper-class white Americans who feel guilty about their own privilege have proposed that disenfranchisement leads to better art. They haven't been right either.

I would put forth that this rhetoric is, in fact, dangerous to the underappreciated sects Rich claims to represent. Works like that 96 Best, which sacrifice artistry and craft to present a political agenda undermine the very cause it purports to promote. If the poor, gays and lesbians, prison inmates, people of marginalized race groups, and the like are represented by bad work, the established hegemony will have every excuse to exclude them from the canon, based on quality and importance in the history of literature.

Rich's prose occasionally breaks into moments of genuine music, but for the most part it's painfully self-aggrandizing, and at times even offensively so. Arts of the Possible feels like nothing so much as a last-ditch effort by a woman who fears she'll be remembered as a radical instead of a writer, or worse, forgotten entirely.

Those of us who take both our politics and our art seriously can only hope that last will indeed come to pass, and that our work will be considered fairly, out of the ugly shadow writers like Rich now cast on anyone whose muse has a political bent.