The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New 1950-1984 [Paperback]

Adrienne Rich (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1994

A selection of poems from nine of Adrienne Rich's earlier books, to which she adds new work and four early "lost" poems.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

"It is hard to overestimate the importance of Rich's work in the landscape of contemporary poetry and in the writing of women's experience and lesbian experience," notes LJ reviewer Christian.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

Poem Of Women
White Night
5:30 A.m.
Abnegation
After Dark
After Twenty Years
The Afterwake
Afterward
Amnesia
Antinous: The Diaries
Artificial Intelligence
At A Bach Concert
At The Jewish New Year
Attention
August
Bears
Blood-sister
The Blue Ghazals (1)
The Blue Ghazals (2)
The Blue Ghazals (3)
The Blue Ghazals (4)
The Blue Ghazals (5)
The Blue Ghazals (7)
The Book
Boundary
The Burning Of Paper Instead Of Children
The Burning Of Paper Instead Of Children
Burning Oneself In
Burning Oneself Out
Cartographies Of Silence
Charleston In The 1860's (from Diaries Of Mary B. Chestnut)
The Corpse-plant
Culture And Anarchy
The Demon Lover
Dialogue
The Diamond Cutters
Dien Bien Phu
Diving Into The Wreck
Education Of A Novelist
Essential Resources
Face To Face
Focus
For A Russian Poet: 1. The Winter Dream
For A Russian Poet: 2. Summer In The Country
For A Russian Poet: 3. The Demonstration
For A Sister
For Ethel Rosenberg
For Julia In Nebraska
For L.g.: Unseen For Twenty Years
For Memory
For The Conjunction Of Two Planets
For The Dead
For The Record
Frame
From A Survivor
From An Old House In America
From Morning-glory To Petersburg (the World Book, 1928)
From The Prison House
Ghazals: Homage To Ghalib (1)
Ghazals: Homage To Ghalib (11)
Ghazals: Homage To Ghalib (13)
Ghazals: Homage To Ghalib (14)
Ghazals: Homage To Ghalib (15)
Ghazals: Homage To Ghalib (16)
Ghazals: Homage To Ghalib (17)
Ghazals: Homage To Ghalib (2)
Ghazals: Homage To Ghalib (3)
Ghazals: Homage To Ghalib (4)
Ghazals: Homage To Ghalib (5)
Ghazals: Homage To Ghalib (6)
Ghazals: Homage To Ghalib (7)
Ghost Of A Chance
Grandmothers: 1. Mary Gravely Jones
Grandmothers: 2. Hattie Rice Rich
Grandmothers: 3. Granddaughter
Halfway
Heroines
Holding Out
The House At The Cascades
Hunger
'i Am In Danger - Sir - '
I Dream I'm The Death Of Orpheus
Ideal Landscape
Implosions
In The Evening
In The Woods
Incipience
Integrity
Jerusalem
Juvenilia
The Knight
The Knot
Leaflets
Letter From The Land Of Sinners
Letters: March 1969: 1
Letters: March 1969: 2
Letters: March 1969: 3
Letters: March 1969: 4
Like This Together
Living In Sin
The Loser
A Marriage In The 'sixties
Meditations For A Savage Child
Merely To Know: 1
Merely To Know: 2
Merely To Know: 3
The Middle-aged
The Mirror In Which Two Are Seen As One
Moth Hour
Mother-in-law
Mother-right
Mourning Picture (painted By Edwin Romanzo Elmer)
Moving In Winter
Natural Resources
Necessities Of Life
Night
Night Watch
Night-pieces: For A Child
Nightbreak
The Ninth Symphony Of Beethoven Understood .. Sexual Message
North American Time
Novella
November 1968
The Observer
On Edges
Open-air Museum
Orion
Our Whole Life
The Parting
The Parting: Ii
Paula Becker To Clara Westhoff
Peeling Onions
The Perennial Answer
Phantasia For Elvira Shatayev
The Phenomenology Of Anger
The Photograph Of An Unmade Bed
Picnic
Pieces: 1. Breakpoint
Pieces: 2. Relevance
Pieces: 3. Memory
Pieces: 4. Time And Place
Pieces: 5. Revelation
Pierrot Le Fou
Planetarium
Power
The Prisoners
Prospective Immigrants Please Note
Rape
Re-forming The Crystal
The Roofwalker
Roots
Rural Reflections
Shooting Script. Part I 11/69-2/70: 1
Shooting Script. Part I 11/69-2/70: 2. Adapted From Mirza Ghalib
Shooting Script. Part I 11/69-2/70: 3
Shooting Script. Part I 11/69-2/70: 4
Shooting Script. Part I 11/69-2/70: 5
Shooting Script. Part I 11/69-2/70: 6
Shooting Script. Part Ii 3-7/70: 10
Shooting Script. Part Ii 3-7/70: 11
Shooting Script. Part Ii 3-7/70: 12
Shooting Script. Part Ii 3-7/70: 13
Shooting Script. Part Ii 3-7/70: 14
Shooting Script. Part Ii 3-7/70: 9. Newsreel
Sisters
Snapshots Of A Daughter-in-law
The Snow Queen
Song
The Spirit Of Place
Splittings
The Stelae
Stepping Backward
Storm Warnings
Study Of History
Tear Gas
To Judith, Taking Leave
The Tourist And The Town (san Miniato Al Monte)
Transcendental Etude
Transit
Translations
The Trees
Trying To Talk With A Man
Turning The Wheel: 1. Location
Turning The Wheel: 2. Burden Baskets
Turning The Wheel: 3. Hohokam
Turning The Wheel: 4. Self-hatred
Turning The Wheel: 5. Particularity
Turning The Wheel: 6. Apparition
Turning The Wheel: 7. Mary Jane Colter, 1904
Turning The Wheel: 8. Turning The Wheel
Twenty-one Love Poems: 1
Twenty-one Love Poems: 10
Twenty-one Love Poems: 11
Twenty-one Love Poems: 12
Twenty-one Love Poems: 13
Twenty-one Love Poems: 14
Twenty-one Love Poems: 15
Twenty-one Love Poems: 16
Twenty-one Love Poems: 17
Twenty-one Love Poems: 18
Twenty-one Love Poems: 19
Twenty-one Love Poems: 2
Twenty-one Love Poems: 20
Twenty-one Love Poems: 21
Twenty-one Love Poems: 3
Twenty-one Love Poems: 4
Twenty-one Love Poems: 5
Twenty-one Love Poems: 6
Twenty-one Love Poems: 7
Twenty-one Love Poems: 8
Twenty-one Love Poems: 9
Twenty-one Love Poems: The Floating Poem, Unnumbered
Two Songs
Two Songs: 2
An Unsaid Word
Upcountry
Upper Broadway
A Valediction Forbidding Mourning
Villa Adriana
Waking In The Dark
A Walk By The Charles
The Wave
When We Dead Awaken
When/then
A Woman Dead In Her Forties
A Woman Mourned By Daughters
Women
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder®

Product Details

• Paperback: 360 pages
• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc (January 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393310752
• ISBN-13: 978-0393310757
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #346,238 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Development of a Feminist Poet, May 29, 2001

By 

Robin Friedman (Washington, D.C. United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New 1950-1984 (Paperback)

Adrienne Rich (b. 1929) has developed into one of the United States' best known poets. She won the National Book Award in 1974 and received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1994. Her book, "The Fact of a Doorframe" consists of a selection she has made from her first nine volumes of poetry written between 1950 and 1983.

I found it interesting to read this book in sequence (from cover to cover) to see the development of Ms Rich's themes as a poet. The early collections, through the mid-1960s, focus on descriptions of nature and on Rich's unhappy marriage experience. For the most part, the poetry is in traditional verse forms There is a concreteness and an accessiblity to them that will carry over into Ms. Rich's later work. I enjoyed the the early poem "At a Bach Concert" (several of Rich's poems feature her reflections on music) and her 1960 poem "Propsective Immigrants Please Note" This poem basically is a commentary on Emma Lazarus's poem, "The New Collussus" America itself, for Rich, makes no promises. She writes: "The door itself/makes no promises./It is only a door."

In the middle portions of the book, the poems become more overtly political and polemical in character. There are sharp criticisms of the War in Vietnam, of the Cold War, of the treatment of Native Americans in the United States, and of environmental desecration. This tendency in Ms Rich's poetry appears, as far as I can tell, somewhat before her focus on womens' issues and on same-sex sexual relationships. The poetry remains predominantly traditional in format although it becomes more experimental and stylistaclly free. It is didactic and clear to read.

The poetry begins to speak distinctly of womens' issues and of lesbian relationships in the collections of the late 1960s. The poems are sometimes sharp in tone, rejecting of men in many instances, and celebrate the commradeship and shared experiences of women and the tenderness that Rich finds in same-sex sexual experiences. The emphasis on mostly left political activism also continues. I found impressive Rich's long sonnet sequence "Twenty-One Love Poems" and the poem "A Woman Dead in her Forties" from the 1978 collection "A Dream of a Common Language. I also enjoyed her tribute to the Novelist Ellen Glasgow, in a late poem in the collection, "The Education of a Novelist." I enjoyed her poem on Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, much as I love that work (Ms Rich does not), and her two translations from the Yiddish poet Kadia Molodowsky. Ms Rich's poetic voice is not limited to feminist issues.

I think this is a good collection to get to understand the work of Ms. Rich. It works better than a poem or two in an anthology. In addition,as good poetry will do, the collection allows the reader to trace the development of the thoughts and feelings of some people in our country at a particular time in its poetry. Rich's poetry is a good bellweather of its age. The poetry has an earthiness an immediateness and an accesibility that will make it worth reading even for those who shy away from modern poetry.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Of the Harvard poets..., November 26, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New 1950-1984 (Paperback)

Perhaps the constant praise of Rich is a bit silly, but she really does take exception to all that is objectionable in contemporary America. This is, of course, a threat to some, but I enjoyed reading this book for the most part. As a lyric poet, Rich is undeniably mediocre, and the usual comparisons that she and her adulating collegiate readers make between her and Emily Dickinson is offensive and ridiculous. However, she speaks her mind, and is an important voice in Lesbian poetry, particularly love poems. If she can't compare in poet greatness with other lesbian poets like Elizabeth Bishop, and can't hold a wet match next to HD, this is not to be regretted. Rich is an unusual poet, one who is determined to write political poetry, even when a different writer might perhaps know better.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars amazing..., June 26, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New 1950-1984 (Paperback)

In Fact of a Doorframe, the evolution of Rich's writing and her life can been followed- rfom the structured, immpersonal poetry in the beginning of her career, to the flaming and introspective poetry of the 70s and 80s, her poetry covers the full range of emotion and topic. She is an amazing poet.