152
PARTISAN REVIEW
The later poems are all Adrienne Rich, and the new strength, the
new inner self-confidence, goes with a new harshness. It is part of the
strength that she makes us feel, certainly not in the least embarrassed,
but uneasy. This short passage in a poem partly in verse is prose, but it
is poetry. And the tone has not the hysteria of the confessional mode
but the strength, say, of the great French aphorists:
Desire: yes: the sudden knowledge, like coming out of 'flu, that
the body is sexual. Walking in the streets with that knowledge. That
evening in the plane from Pittsburgh, fantasizing going
to
meet you.
Walking through the airport blazing with energy and joy; you were a
man, a stranger, a name, a voice on the telephone, a friend; this desire
was mine, this energy my energy; it could be used a hundred ways,
and going
to
meet you could be one of them.
In a quite different style, from a recent poem called "From an Old
House in America," here are some lines about the "strong women,
women with character and determination, in fact women with guts"
whom Ms. Rich, in her article "The Kingdom of the Fathers " in
Partisan Review
described (she took the quoted phrases from Margaret
Mead) as being acceptable, when the West was opened out, even to the
kingdom of the fathers:
I am not the wheatfield
nor the virgin forest
I never chose this place
yet I am of it now
in my decent collar, in the dagguertotype
I pierce its legend with my look
my hands wring the necks of prairie chickens
I am used
to
blood
When the men hit the hobo track
I stay on with the children
my power is brief and local
but I know my power. ..
Adrienne Rich has developed a poetic power that is more than
"brief and local. "
If
one were having a general argument with her one
would say, yes, it has been the fate of women to bear children, to be
