Today's NYT reports that one of my favorite poets, Adrienne Rich, has been named [a] recipient[] of [an]honorary National Book Awards medal[], the National Book Foundation announced Wednesday.
The 77-year-old Rich, known for her passionate, socially conscious verse, has been awarded a ''Medal for Distinguished Contribution.''
A few of Rich's poems have literally sustained me through some of my darkest days.
Here's my favorite:
Transcendental Etude" in The Fact of a Doorframe
No one ever told us we had to study our lives,
make of our lives a study, as if learning natural history
or music, that we should begin
with the simple exercises first
and slowly go on trying
the hard ones, practicing till strength
and accuracy became one with the daring
to leap into transcendence, take the chance
of breaking down the wild arpeggio
or faulting the full sentence of the fugue.
--And in fact we can't live like that: we take on
everything at once before we've even begun
to read or mark time, we're forced to begin
in the midst of the hard movement,
the one already sounding as we are born.
2 comments:
You have a very beautiful blog. I really enjoy reading for the poetry, wicca, and of course, the political ranting. Keep up the good work.
Lurker
adrienne rich is in my estimation easily in the top 5 greatest & most significant 20th century poets.
that's not american poets or even women poets.
that's all of them.
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