Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Poetic Obituaries: Arthritis insinuating itself

by the mid-'80s, Adrienne Rich leaned on her cane as she entered the packed auditorium. Imagine several hundred men and women turning out to hear someone whose entire life, art, and intellectual project centered on womanhood and lesbianism. It was absolutely unprecedented in the South.

Rich was not the first feminist public intellectual, nor the first lesbian philosopher, nor the only major woman poet of the 20th century. But she was certainly a, if not the, leading figure behind much of what has evolved into today's "gender studies," from which all too often the lesbian point of view remains conveniently ancillary, minimized, ghettoized.

from Gay Voice: Adrienne Rich's legacy
then Los Angeles Times: An Appreciation: Adrienne Rich

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