Customer Reviews

The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems 1950-2001, New Edition

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I was privileged to hear Rich read some of her poetry back in 1973 while living in Cambridge, Mass. All I remember of that evening is the image of a distinguished-looking, gray-haired woman dressed in black reading serious poetry that did not try to be funny or cute. I guess that may be why, when I went through a difficult divorce seven years ago, I found myself reading from this book late into the night, soaking up the unforgettable images, and somehow using these deep poems as a ladder of sorts to climb out of the hole of depression I found myself trapped in.

You know when you have been touched to the core by great poetry: Read, or better, record yourself reading 'Diving into the Wreck', then listen to it some night late when you are in a contemplative mood. Likewise, 'Shooting Script', 'Pierrot le Fou', 'Integrity' or any number of other poems in this book. Unforgettable mythic imagery; deep imagery that resonates with the psyche. It makes not one dime of difference whether you are male or female, since deep inside we're all in some profound sense androgynous.

From 'Shooting Script':

"But this is not the war I came to see, buying my ticket, stumbling through the darkness, finding my place among the sleepers and masturbators in the dark."

"Somewhere someone has that war stored up in metal canisters, a memory he cannot use, somewhere my innocence is proven with my guilt, but this would not be the war I fought in."

Here Rich is not talking about some external war, but a very personal war, her war. As with the great Bhagavad Gita, where the warrior Arjuna turns in anguish to his spiritual guide Sri Krishna for answers while on the field of battle, this battlefield in Rich's poem is the war within, the struggle for self-mastery that every human being must wage. It is a mythic war, inward toward the true kernel of the self.

The criticism sometime leveled at Rich is that she is feminist and overly political. Of course, she does not endorse the images of a culture in which if you're white, male, heterosexual, there is the implication that you 'own' the world and you get to decide what's history, what's literature. She rightly disputes that wisdom. And it's also questionable how one can avoid making a political statement if you write serious poetry; almost everything one does or says has political undertones.

While this particular edition is OK, to contain 50 years worth of Rich's poetry in just one slender volume such as this does not really do her justice. The edition I own is "Poems Selected and New: 1950-1984". That is a much better collection. This edition, for example, contains a much-abbreviated version of Shooting Script, and other key poems have been cut out. For this reason, I recommend that you look for the 1984 version of this book.

Adrienne Rich is anything but a knee jerk feminist propagandist. She's one of America's most important poets, and this volume charts the first part of her journey. What's most striking about Rich is her refusal to settle into any comfort zone: political, psychological, aesthetic. She is most certainly a poet with a strong public voice, but she uses that voice in a way that challenges all of us who care about the meaning of creativity in a democratic society. The early volumes collected her present Rich as a poet who has absolutely mastered the formal demands of modernist poetry; her peers are Yeats, Frost and W.H. Auden. But, responding to the constraints of life in 50s and early 60s America, she recreated herself in books like Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law and The Will to Change. She experiments with the radical politics and art forms of the 60s, engages in the battles against white supremacy, patriarchy, and moral complacency in all its forms. And at each turn, she examines her own premises and poetry with a seriousness akin to that of James Baldwin or Toni Morrison. But mostly, she writes poems that will sink in deep and repay renewed visits over the decades: "Diving into the Wreck," "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers," "The Burning of Paper Instead of Children," "21 Love Poems." Read her and you'll know what her critics are afraid of.

I don't read poetry on a regular basis, but I loved this book of work by Adrienne Rich. Every time I page through it I find something new to catch my eye.

I first posted this under "The School Among the Ruins" but it really belongs here:

In 1988 my ardent feminist girlfriend gave me a copy of "The Fact of a Doorframe" (the 1984 edition) and told me not to speak to her again until I finished reading it. This seemed an odd request, but since I really wanted to speak to her again, I read it. Rich's uncompromising passion not only moved me; it started a process that changed my view of the world and ended up changing my life. I guess you should expect that from a writer this powerful.

P.S. I particularly love "Your Native Land, Your Life", "The Dream of a Common Language", and "What is Found There". ("What is Found There" is supposed to be essays and letters but it seems like poetry to me.)

bla bla bla, poetry for the poet. Nothing to interesting for college students and yet this author is touring colleges like the Grateful Dead in its hayday. Listen, some of this is interesting and some is just over my head. Other poems are arrogant and the structure is loose, and threadbare. Some poetry can make you snicker with irony or snarl from the gut. This feels like each poem has an idea, which is cut in half, ensuing a second line with double the idea, only to be doubled exponentially etc... through the last line. I felt like it was a cheap and at times lame product that should have been more concise and made into a novel.

Terrible feminist propaganda that trashes any and all men even if they consider themselves to be feminist. No rhyme, no meter except in her really early stuff, which is the only tolerable bit in the entire book.

"A woman in the shape of a monster
a monster in the shape of a woman
the skies are full of them"

need I say more? Elitist garbage that can't hold a candle to Thomas, Poe, Tennyson, Dickinson, Yeats, Plath, Eliot, and you can probably include yourself in this list. If you actually enjoy reading this, take out a personal ad or load a gun - one of the two...with everything out there, don't waste your time on this rubish.