NEW
Library Project
Volume 1, Number 2 - Fall 2002
On
the Bookshelf…
By Patricia Andres
What
Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics, by
Adrienne Rich. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1993.
We
are often asked how we choose stories for the program. The two-part reply
is both direct and slant. First, a story must be short enough to read
aloud within fifteen to twenty minutes; second, the story needs the deep
and beautiful texture of the poetic.
In
this book, poet Adrienne Rich offers reflections on poetic language and
its power. The poetic voice is recognized by its intention—a desire to
awaken within the reader/listener the “taproot of the imagination” so
that “locked chambers of possibility can open” in freedom.
Whether
she is reflecting on the poetry of everyday experience, where “a piece
of the universe is revealed as if for the first time,” or examining how
the luck of birth and privilege gave her early opportunities for the
poetic “flashes of human power” that she now hungers for all to have,
she returns to a theme that rings true in our sessions: the poetic goes
beyond the formal to the word, the utterance, the image that carries a
magnetic charge, a “questing for what might otherwise be.”
Rich
voices her desire for more public recognition and reception for poetry, a
movement that has progressed steadily since the book’s publication. Yet
the core message resounds in today’s climate as well: the poet
“conjures a language that is public, intimate, inviting, terrifying, and
beloved.”