The Dream of a Common Language: Poems 1974-1977

by Adrienne Rich

Paperback, 1993

Status

Checked out

Genres

LGBTQ+

All Topics

Fiction

Publication

W. W. Norton & Company (1993), Edition: Reissue, Paperback, 96 pages

Description

"The Dream of a Common Language explores the contours of a woman's heart and mind in language for everybody--language whose plainness, laughter, questions and nobility everyone can respond to. . . . No one is writing better or more needed verse than this."--Boston Evening Globe

User reviews

LibraryThing member nbmars

In November, 2006, Adrienne Rich was awarded the 2006 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. In her acceptance speech she observed, "...when poetry lays its hand on our shoulder, we can be to an almost physical degree touched and moved. The imagination’s roads open again,

giving the lie to that slammed and bolted door, that razor-wired fence, that brute dictum." Certainly this can be seen with the poem from which the title is derived for this collection of her work. From the poem "Origins and History of Consciousness":

No one lives in this room
without confronting the whiteness of the wall
behind the poems, planks of books,
photographs of dead heroines.
Without contemplating last and late
the true nature of poetry. The drive
to connect. The dream of a common language.

(JAF)

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LibraryThing member MatthewHittinger

"Twenty One Love Poems" was a pivotal sequence for me, especially as I grew to understand why I tend to write in sequences. I spent the month of December that year transcribing one poem each day, rewriting and retyping each word to really inhabit what she had done on the page.

LibraryThing member quantumbutterfly

A beautiful collection of modern poetry here. Reminds me of a line from Audre Lorde: "For women, poetry is not a luxury." Rich puts forth vital words here.

LibraryThing member HadriantheBlind

Wow. This is Real Poetry. Raw and beautiful emotion and tragedy. I felt rather embarrassed to be reading some of these - just from the sense of intimacy that they portrayed, I felt as though I was an ugly intruder upon that.

Copied almost all of these down. Power, the 21 love poems. Now to decide

which ones to commit to memory.

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LibraryThing member wealhtheowwylfing

Personal favorites: "Transcendental Etude," and "Twenty-one Love Poems"

LibraryThing member jonfaith

I read this collection in two sittings, several months apart. The opening salvo was difficult, deftly constructed and potentially militant. The tome was placed aside and my interests went elsewhere.

This morning, with its megamoon and balmy 0F temperatures saw me grasp it again from my kit bag. I am

glad I did. These are sinuous verses, targeted to a relationship where the flesh is often generous. I liked the caprice, the intellectual possibility which occurred periodically.

The collection features two poems deliberately attached to historical situations. That was an intriguing development. I can’t place it at the same level of the William Carlos Williams which I have grown to savor. There is little doubt, however, that this will not mark my last effort with Adrienne Rich.

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LibraryThing member LibroLindsay

These poems read hot and cold for me, but the ones I liked had lines that gave me a supercharge.

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