Upon Discovering Adrienne Rich

            In reading Adrienne Rich’s The School Among the Ruins, I immediately picked up the political implications—of varying subjects and degrees—within each of the poems that I have thus far read. Like Merwin, her poems seem to have lyrical quality, one in which you can appreciate the sound of the poem, the images that she evokes without knowing the exact event she references, although a specific event may not serve as the primary focus of every poem. In some poems she references specific events, such as the voting scandal in Tallahassee, FL. In others, she seems to be, like Merwin, seeking answers to impossible questions; however, the questions seem to be different for Rich.

            For Rich, the questions seem to revolve around making sense of the world in which she finds herself and, in the process, drawing political attention to the oppressed, the marginalized. While Merwin investigates memory and distance in his book of poems, Rich seems to use distance in an effort to separate herself from the culture of the location in which she happened to find herself, to don the persona of those marginalized in order to see the world as they do. However, Rich is also marginalized as a Jewish lesbian growing up in the midst of great political turmoil. She realizes that she cannot completely separate herself from the internalized values, moral, etc. with which certain outside forces instilled. Her parents, her location, her education have all influenced her place in the world and how she is expected to view it.  

            In her efforts to take on different perspectives, Rich diminishes the larger implications of global politics and brings the focus back to the individual, advocating personal relationships and the individual over governmental politics. While Merwin’s use of “I” in his poems left me with the impression of a single speaker, Rich’s “I” appears to be more complicated, taking on different personas at various times as she attempts to distance herself from her individual identity to investigate the perspective of others. Despite such a global focus, her poems strike me as intimate, not overtly attacking corporate greed, government power and oppression but in raw whispers. Instead, she focuses on people—their responses and how the poet speaker wishes to be viewed by them. At times, however, the poems seem to express the thoughts of a frustrated speaker in the inability of Man, specifically Americans, to step out of their habits and sense of entitlement to use their voices, to view the world not as a set of stereotypes but as a community of individuals with individual histories, to invest in people instead of things.

            While Merwin’s poetry provided me with a sense of universal connectedness through personal images, Rich seems to be tearing down the universal in order to focus on the individual, creating in me the overall idea that we are all humans and have the same capacity to experience the same emotions but that we are all still individuals that perceive the world in individual ways.

Just Around the Bend...

In Helen Vendler’s review of Merwin and The Shadow of Sirius, she depicts a vivid link between Merwin and his personal memories and experiences; however, through his poetry, Merwin is able is able to express a more universal experience, evoking a connection in the reader with the words on the page. How is this possible? While language may not have a word to capture a certain feeling, he is able to create a simple image or images that speak to the reader. How can such personal experiences, personal memories that have no direct connection to me the reader, produce a similar emotion? Is it because it is a poem, and we, as a reader, expect some evocative punch line to leave us ethereal?

I think Merwin tests the idea of memory and the lived experience with the bending of time, creating a place in which the speaker resides in a place that Vendler calls “suspended between past and present, with neither environment providing a true native tongue.” Through the linear and/or recursive nature of his poems, Merwin simultaneously depicts the effects of time—the aging of a hand, the changing of the seasons—with the overall feeling of timelessness—“the river still seems not to move / as though it were the same river” (96). However in other poems, Merwin seems to comment on inconstancy of time, testing the notion that it creeps by unnoticeably—“it has come upon us again taking us once more by surprise” (85). In this poem, Merwin seems to suggest the sudden change of seasons, as if the grass were suddenly ready for reaping and the change of the season happens in an instant. Perhaps Merwin is testing the notion of poetry in memory, the ability to recall one instant in time, one moment in which everything changed or became illuminated?

In “The Long and the Short of It,” I see Merwin exploring the idea of memory and how it can be expressed in poetry. He explored the idea of measurement and the distance between the memories he recalls, how he experiences the memory now with the distance of time and age and how the memory is never truly captured as it was originally experienced. It is by words that we measure, and it is in the words that we find meaning, reflectively examining the moments of our lives that led us to where we are and attempting to contain them in neat little rows, “the verse turning with its breath.” Although he doesn’t use specific rhyme and meter, this particular line evokes the meter and measure of song. Something, again, that is measured. However, the idea of measurement is problematic in that there is something here that is beyond measure. When words are not enough and one must use rely on a recreated image, the nameless emotions cannot be measured, yet we believe it, we feel it.

As Merwin states in “My Hand,” “it is what I remember / but it never seems quite the same.” While in this particular poem Merwin ponders the living presence of the past as it consumes the present, he tests the idea of memory and how it is not the same as the original experience. He demonstrates the quick transition of past to present, of experience (perhaps event would be a more apt word?) to memory in the words he chooses to describe the images: flutter, vanished, flash.

In each poem, I felt this sense of beyondness. If I read this poem just one more time, I will be able to grasp it. I will have the answer to the question; I will know what he wants me to know. The feeling, the words, the moment is right there is I could just stretch a little further, if I just dig a little deeper for the gold. Perhaps this is what Merwin wanted, to create for the reader individual moments of exploration and contemplation, to ask the reader to ponder those same questions and to hear the silence.