An Atlas of the Difficult World: Poems 1988-1991 [Paperback]

Adrienne Rich (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 17, 1991

Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

In this, her thirteenth book of verse, the author of "The Dream of a Common Language" and "Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law" writes of war, oppression, the future, death, mystery, love and the magic of poetry.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The heart of Adrienne Rich's award-winning collection beats in its title sequence, 13 poems charting "An Atlas of the Difficult World." Like Atlas, who bears Earth on his shoulders, Rich bears--and wields--an enormous political consciousness. These poems find her struggling to say what is honest and true, resisting easy answers, having the ambition to risk everything; these are the energies for which her readers return. For example, after deriding as solipsistic the poetry of Richard Hugo, she writes:

I wonder if this is a white man's madness.
I honor your truth and refuse to leave it at that.
What have I learned from stories of the hunt, of lonely men in gangs?
But there were other stories...

Rich knows that mere political poetry has a quick expiration date. Her genius enables her to speak to the moment and to posterity simultaneously. "Catch if you can your country's moment, begin / where any calendar's ripped-off: Appomattox / Wounded Knee, Los Alamos / Selma, the last airlift from Saigon," she exhorts at one point, tuning the present to its history like Muriel Rukeyser or Ezra Pound. Early in the book Rich praises "those needed to teach, advise, persuade, weigh arguments ... the meticulous delicate work of reaching the heart of the desperate woman, the desperate man / --never-to-be-finished, still unbegun work of repair," but wonders who will continue this work in the America she has witnessed. "It cannot be done without them / and where are they now?" With this, her 21st book, her echo returns the answer. --Edward Skoog

From Publishers Weekly

Rich's 13th collection of poems is mostly a free-verse montage on America's broken promises and latent possibilities ("This is the desert where missiles are planted like corms / This is the breadbasket of foreclosed farms"). The work jarringly evokes a country fissured by poverty, loneliness, oppression of women, a nation that has not met the human needs of its citizens. Fulfilling her definition of a patriot as one who "wrestles for the soul of her country as she wrestles for her own being," Rich mingles the personal and political in forthright meditations on the world's anguish and beauty. Intermittently rising to powerful moments, this tapestry of the world's disenfranchised and downtrodden fails to coalesce into a unified whole.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 72 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; First Edition edition (December 17, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393308316
• ISBN-13: 978-0393308310
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #876,972 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Patriot is Not a Weapon, August 28, 2011

By 

Daniel Murphy "Dan Murphy" (Redmond, OR USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: An Atlas of the Difficult World: Poems 1988-1991 (Paperback)

In a twist on William Wordsworth's words, in my family, the child (my adult daughter) is often mother to the man: she often introduces me to literature that is deeply enriching, and that I would have otherwise completed my trundle from cradle to grave without enjoying. Such is the case with An Atlas of the Difficult World.

Sometimes poetry packs density of thought so tightly that it becomes diamond-like in its ability to etch new messages on the glass windowpanes that we view life through. Such is the poetry of Adrienne Rich. Rich writes at one point that writing comes from the marrow of the bone, and her bones are not quiet ones. Hematopoesis is the process that bone marrow uses to form the complex elements that make up the blood that runs in our veins, and the literary hemotopoesis of Rich generates a wealth of elements that include a vibrant femininism, a spelunking expedition into the nature of our human and national soul, a compassion for the disenfranchised, and a steely eyed clarity, a blowtorch intensity, that incinerates hypocrisy and preciousness.

It would be easy to make a list of the brilliant lines in Rich's poetry, and one can certainly try to patch together a meaningful review of this book. But the last poem in An Atlas of the Difficult World is, for all intents and purposes, Rich's own review of her book, and I cannot match her eloquence:

"it will not be simple, it will not be long
it will take little time, it will take all your thought
it will take all your heart, it will take all your breath
it will be short, it will not be simple

it will touch through your ribs, it will take all your heart
it will not be long, it will occupy your thought
as a city is occupied, as a bed is occupied
it will take all your flesh, it will not be simple

You are coming into us who cannot withstand you
you are coming into us who never wanted to withstand you
you are taking parts of us into places never planned
you are going far away with pieces of our lives

it will be short, it will take all your breath
it will not be simple, it will become your will"

Quantum sufficit.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The signal work of an important American poet, February 9, 2001

By 

Joshua Jacobs (Newton, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: An Atlas of the Difficult World: Poems 1988-1991 (Paperback)

I'm surprised no substantial reviews of *Atlas* have been posted, as anyone who has read it knows that Rich's survey of American life during the Gulf War era (in the title poem) is an unforgettable document of our time. Rich is known as a feminist writer and radical critic, and that impression scares off undergraduates for whom feminism is too loaded a term. This book, especially the title poem, "Eastern War Time," and "Tattered Kaddish," shows that Rich's feminist insight does not limit her attention--or relevance--to women subjects and readers.

Many lines from "An Atlas of the Difficult World" stay with me, but from its final section, I'll give this as an example of how Rich strives to find in her readers equal partners, sharing her task of representing all of American life:

I know you are reading this poem which is not in your language guessing at some words while others keep you reading and I want to know which words they are... I know you are reading this poem because there is nothing else left to read there where you have landed, stripped as you are.

Rich sees her readers as stripped of innocence, of the ability to make casual assumptions about their lives in America and the world. But these poems offer the gift of understanding our current state, and of a beautiful, surprisingly generous description of us all.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars American Poetry Lovers Must-read, April 16, 2008

By 

Barbie (KY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: An Atlas of the Difficult World: Poems 1988-1991 (Paperback)

An Atlas of the Difficult World is a must-read for Adrienne Rich fans or anyone interested in contemporary American poetry. This volume is surprisingly short (only 60 pages long), but the material seems rather dense (in my opinion). This volume of poetry is broken into two sections. The first section is the longer poem "An Atlas of the Difficult World" that is broken into thirteen parts. The second section is comprised of twelve shorter poems. A couple of works in section II titled "Eastern War Time" and "Through Corralitos under Rolls of Cloud" are broken into smaller parts. This volume of poetry deals with political issues such as war, the establishment of a female identity, and difficult subjects such as abuse, murder, and anti-Semitism. There are a few poems in this collection that definitely stand out for me. "Eastern War Time" parts 1-6 show young Jewish girls trying to find out who they are in the midst of WWII: "what's an American girl / in wartime...ignorantly Jewish / trying to grasp the world / through books" (lines 2-3, 6-8). Another touching poem in this collection is "Tattered Kaddish," which embodies the bitter irony of singing praises to life when so many are suffering: "Praise to life though it crumbled in like a tunnel / on ones we knew and loved" (lines 6-7). Part one of "An Atlas of the Difficult World" contains a short stanza that captures a horrific scene of abuse. Yet the speaker wishes to turn a deaf ear ("I don't want to hear") to such "devastation." This selection left me with an image I find hard to forget. For anyone who does not take poetry seriously, this collection will not be worth the time. Although many of the poems seem to have a clear message, I feel that some of the works require the reader's attention, devotion, and close reading to fully appreciate the messages Rich is divulging. True American poetry aficionados will value this great volume of poetry.