The dominant influences on the life and work of Adrienne Rich were her father, feminism, lesbianism, her life as a mother, and her experiences as a woman.
A Chronology
1929. Adrienne Rich was born in Maryland, May 16th. Began writing poetry
as a child with the
encouragement and influence of her father.
1951. Rich graduated from Radcliffe College. Her first book of poems, A
Change of World, is
published and is chosen by W. H. Auden for the Yale Younger Poets
Award.
1952-53. She received Guggenheim Fellowship and traveled in Europe. Begins
signs of
rheumatoid arthritis.
1953. Rich married Alfred H. Conrad, who was an economist teaching at Harvard.
They live in
Cambridge, Massachusetts from 1953-1966.
1955. Their first son, David Conrad is born. The Diamond Cutters and Other
Poems is published.
Rich received Ridgely Torrence Memorial Award for the Poetry Society
of America.
1957. Second son, Paul Conrad, is born.
1959. Third son, Jacob Conrad is born.
1960. Rich received The National Institute of Arts and Letters Award for
poetry.
1961-62. She received Guggenheim Fellowship and lives with her family in
the Netherlands
1962. Received a Bollingen Foundation grant for translation of Dutch poetry.
1962-63. She received Amy Lowell Traveling Fellowship.
1963. Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law: Poems 1954-1962 is published. Received
Bess Hokin
Prize of Poetry Magazine.
1966. Necessities of Life: Poems 1962-1965 is published. Moves to New York
with family and
becomes involved in radical politics and protests against the
Vietnam War.
1967. Selected Poems is published in Britain. Rich received Honorary doctorate
from Wheaton
College. She also has orthopedic surgery for arthritis.
1967-69. Lecturer at Swathmore College and Adjunct Professor of Writing
Division at Columbia
University School of the Arts.
1968. Began teaching at SEEK program at City College of New York. Death
of her father.
1969. Leaflets; Poems 1965-68 is published.
1970. Death of her husband, Alfred Conrad.
1971. The Will to Change: Poems 1968-1970 was published. Received the Shelley
Memorial
Award from the Poetry Society of America. She begins to identify
with the women's
liberation movement.
1972-73. Brandeis University, visiting professor of Creative Writing.
1973. Diving into the Wreck: Poems 1971-1972 was published.
1974. Rich shares the National Book Award with Allen Ginsberg.
1976. Of Women Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution. Twenty-One
Love Poems. Begins life with Michelle Cliff.
1976-79. Rich was Professor of English at Douglass and Rutgers University.
1978. The Dream of Common Language: Poems 1974-1977 was published.
1979.On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978 was published.
Received Honorary doctorate from Smith College and moved to Montague, Massachusetts.
1980. She again had orthopedic surgery for arthritis.
1981. A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far: Poems 1978-1981 was published.
National Gay Task Force awarded Rich Fund for Human Dignity Award.
1981-83. Co-edited Sinister Wisdom, a lesbian/feminist journal.
1981-1987. A. D. White Professor at Large at Cornell University.
1983. Sources was published.
1983-1984. Rich was a visiting professor at Scripps College.
1984. The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New 1950-1984 was published.
Moved to Santa Cruz, California.
1984-86. Visiting Professor at Stanford University.
1986. Your Native Land, Your Life: Poems. Blood, Bread, and Poetry: Selected
Prose 1979-1985 was published. Rich received Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.
1986-1993. Professor of English at Stanford University.
1987. Rich received Honorary doctorate from College of Wooster in Ohio and
Brandeis University.
1989. Time's Power: Poems 1985-1988. She was a Marjorie Kovler Fellow at
University of Chicago. Received the National Poetry Association Award for
Distinguished Service to the Art of Poetry. Received from New York University
the Elmer Holmes Bobst Award in Arts and Letters.
1990. Rich received Honorary doctorate from City College of New York and
Harvard University.
1990-present. Member of Department of Literature at the American Academy
and Institute of Arts and Letters. Member of founding editorial group for
Bridges: A Journal for Jewish Feminists and Our Friends.
1991. An Atlas of the Difficult World: Poems 1988-1991 was published. Received
the Common Wealth Award in Literature.
1991-present. Became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
1991-92. Rich received Honorary doctorate from Swarthmore Colllege. Received
the Robert Frost Sliver Medal from the Poetry Society of America. Two grandchildren,
Julia Arden Conrad and Charles Reddington Conrad were born.
1992. Rich had spinal surgery.
1993. Collected Early Poems, 1950-1970 and What is Found There: Notebooks
on Poetry and Politics were published. An Atlas of the Difficult World is
awarded the Poet's Prize.
During Rich's first years of writing poetry she modeled her writing after
the dominant male
influential writers of the time. But as she progressed as a writer her influences
and style began to
change. During the 1960's she began to move away from her formal patterns
of writing and
began to be influenced by feminism, lesbianism, and issues of women's experiences
through
their education and identity. She was inspired by a quote said by James
Baldwin, "any real
change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the
loss of all that gave one
an identity, the end of safety."
"What are you going through? she said, is the great question.
Philosopher of oppression, theorist
of the victories of force.
We write from the marrow of our bones. What she did not
ask, or tell: how victims save their own lives."
Excerpt from Rich's "For a Friend in Travail"
Secondary Sources
Gelpi, Barbara and Charles. Adrienne Rich's Poetry and Prose. New York:
W.W. Norton &
Company, 1993.
Rich, Adrienne. Norton Anthology of American Literature, Fifth Edition.
Ed. Nina Baym. New
York: W. W. Norton & Company. 1998. 2711-2731.
Internet Resources
http://melville.books.com/scripts/
http://www.poetry.books.com/rich.htm