[News] Remembering Adrienne Rich: poet, activist and supporter of Palestinian liberation
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Thu Mar 29 11:02:52 EDT 2012
Remembering Adrienne Rich: poet, activist and
supporter of Palestinian liberation
Submitted by Benjamin Doherty on Thu, 03/29/2012 - 14:46
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/benjamin-doherty/remembering-adrienne-rich-poet-activist-and-supporter-palestinian-liberation
Remembering Adrienne Rich: poet, activist and
supporter of Palestinian liberation
Submitted by Benjamin Doherty on Thu, 03/29/2012 - 14:46
[]
Audre Lorde, Meridel Lesueur, and Adrienne Rich
in 1980 at a writing workshop in Austin, Texas.
(<http://electronicintifada.net/people/k-kendall>K. Kendall)
American poet, activist and teacher Adrienne Rich
passed away yesterday at age 82. She is one of
<http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/adrienne-rich>the
most influential poets of the late 20th century.
In the 1960s, she was involved in anti-war and
women’s, black and queer liberation struggles,
and her poetry engaged these issues. During the
Clinton Administration in 1997,
<http://www.hotink.com/8797.html>Rich famously
refused the National Medal of the Arts, writing:
There is no simple formula for the relationship
of art to justice. But I do know that art–in my
own case the art of poetry–means nothing if it
simply decorates the dinner table of power which
holds it hostage. The radical disparities of
wealth and power in America are widening at a
devastating rate. A President cannot meaningfully
honor certain token artists while the people at large are so dishonored.
Her 1980 essay
<http://books.google.com/books?id=PaNdHqo-9wIC&lpg=PA229&ots=kQUGz8fExy&pg=PA227#v=onepage&q&f=false>“Compulsory
Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence” challanged
second-wave feminists to see heterosexuality in
practice as a kind of sexual inequality and a
characteristic of men’s power over women.
Addressing her feminist peers in the essay, she writes:
Feminist theory can no longer afford merely to
voice a toleration of “lesbianism” as an
“alternative life-style,” or make token allusion
to lesbians. A feminist critique of compulsory
heterosexual orientation for women is long overdue.
She adds:
I am suggesting that heterosexuality, like
mother-hood, needs to be recognized and studied
as a political institution–even, or especially,
by those individuals who feel they are, in their
personal experience, the precursors of a new social relation between the sexes.
Breaking Zionist taboos, supporting the boycott
During her activist career, Adrienne Rich was
involved with
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=New_Jewish_Agenda&oldid=414647307>New
Jewish Agenda which broke Zionist taboos around
Palestinian existence and right to speak. In
2009,
<http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2009/rich080209.html>she
endorsed the Palestinian call for academic and
cultural boycott of Israel despite having reservations:
Until now, as a believer in boundary-crossings, I
would not have endorsed a cultural and academic
boycott. But Israel’s continuing, annihilative
assaults in Gaza and the one-sided
rationalizations for them have driven me to
re-examine my thoughts about cultural exchanges.
Israel’s blockading of information, compassionate
aid, international witness and free cultural and
scholarly expression has become extreme and
morally stone-blind. Israeli Arab parties have
been banned from the elections, Israeli Jewish
dissidents arrested, Israeli youth imprisoned for
conscientious refusal of military service.
Academic institutions are surely only relative
sites of power. But they are, in their funding
and governance, implicated with state economic
and military power. And US media, institutions
and official policy have gone along with all this.
Adrienne Rich’s essay
<http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/essay/239326>“Someone
is Writing a Poem” considers the power and
constraints of art to intervene in politics, and
is a crucial read for any artist-activist.
In paradise every
the desert wind is rising
third thought
in hell there are no thoughts
is of earth
sand screams against your government
issued tent hell’s noise
in your nostrils crawl
into your ear-shell
wrap yourself in no-thought
wait no place for the little lyric
wedding-ring glint the reason why
on earth
they never told you
<http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/180085>Wait (2006).
American poet, activist and teacher Adrienne Rich
passed away yesterday at age 82. She is one of
the most influential poets of the late 20th century.
In the 1960s, she was involved in anti-war and
women’s, black and queer liberation struggles,
and her poetry engaged these issues. During the
Clinton Administration in 1997, Rich famously
refused the National Medal of the Arts, writing:
There is no simple formula for the
relationship of art to justice. But I do know
that art–in my own case the art of poetry–means
nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table
of power which holds it hostage. The radical
disparities of wealth and power in America are
widening at a devastating rate. A President
cannot meaningfully honor certain token artists
while the people at large are so dishonored.
Her 1980 essay “Compulsory Heterosexuality and
Lesbian Existence” challanged second-wave
feminists to see heterosexuality in practice as a
kind of sexual inequality and a characteristic of
men’s power over women. Addressing her feminist peers in the essay, she writes:
Feminist theory can no longer afford merely
to voice a toleration of “lesbianism” as an
“alternative life-style,” or make token allusion
to lesbians. A feminist critique of compulsory
heterosexual orientation for women is long overdue.
She adds:
I am suggesting that heterosexuality, like
mother-hood, needs to be recognized and studied
as a political institution–even, or especially,
by those individuals who feel they are, in their
personal experience, the precursors of a new social relation between the sexes.
Breaking Zionist taboos, supporting the boycott
During her activist career, Adrienne Rich was
involved with New Jewish Agenda which broke
Zionist taboos around Palestinian existence and
right to speak. In 2009, she endorsed the
Palestinian call for academic and cultural
boycott of Israel despite having reservations:
Until now, as a believer in
boundary-crossings, I would not have endorsed a
cultural and academic boycott. But Israel’s
continuing, annihilative assaults in Gaza and the
one-sided rationalizations for them have driven
me to re-examine my thoughts about cultural
exchanges. Israel’s blockading of information,
compassionate aid, international witness and free
cultural and scholarly expression has become
extreme and morally stone-blind. Israeli Arab
parties have been banned from the elections,
Israeli Jewish dissidents arrested, Israeli youth
imprisoned for conscientious refusal of military
service. Academic institutions are surely only
relative sites of power. But they are, in their
funding and governance, implicated with state
economic and military power. And US media,
institutions and official policy have gone along with all this.
Adrienne Rich’s essay “Someone is Writing a Poem”
considers the power and constraints of art to
intervene in politics, and is a crucial read for any artist-activist.
In paradise every
the desert wind is rising
third thought
in hell there are no thoughts
is of earth
sand screams against your government
issued tent hell’s noise
in your nostrils crawl
into your ear-shell
wrap yourself in no-thought
wait no place for the little lyric
wedding-ring glint the reason why
on earth
they never told you
Wait (2006).
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