Page numbers listed correspond to the print edition of this book. You can use your device’s search function to locate particular terms in the text.
abstraction, 65–67, 72
Abu-Jamal, Mumia, 158
Accumulation of Capital(Luxemburg), 90
Achterberg, Gerrit, 133
Adler, Frances Payne, 164
Adler, Viktor, 91
Adnan, Etel, 80
affirmative action, 11 7
African Americans, 5–6, 50, 51, 67, 130
civil rights movement of, 54, 73, 89
Dunayevskaya and, 83, 84, 86, 88–89
feminism of, 70, 81–82
“identity politics” and, 152–53
Marx and, 86, 88
in prison, 157–58
see also race
Abmad, Aijaz, 133, 154
Aidoo, Ama Ata, 61
Alexander, Jane, 98–99
Alexander, Meena, 115
alienation, 2, 8, 41, 59, 109, 112
Altieri, Charles, 128–31
American Indians, 59–60, 94, 148
American Poets in 1976 (Heyen, ed.), 10
amnesia, lying and, 32
anticommunism, 4, 49, 52–53, 72, 73, 140
anti-Marxism, 3–4, 39, 69
anti-Semitism, 45, 78, 91, 109
Holocaust and, 42, 143
Anzaldúa, Gloria, 96–97
apartheid:
of literary culture, 109–11
in South Africa, 79
Arabs, 144
arts:
education and, 101, 103
fear and hatred of, 52–53, 104
federal funding for, 99–101, 104–5
as higher world view, 44–45, 52
lack of thought about, 112
politics and, 41–42, 46–61
social presence of, 99, 102–5
see also specific topics
“Arts of the Possible” (Rich), 146–67, 175n–76n
Asia Society, 133
astronauts, female, 73–74
Atlas of the Difficult World, An (Rich), 139
“Atlas of the Difficult World, An” (Rich), 141–42
“Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers” (Rich), 17
Austen, jane, 14, 28
“Backside of the Academy, The“ (Rukeyser), 123
Baldwin, James, 50, 51, 55, 56, 61
Bambara, Toni Cade, 61
Beauvoir, Simone de, 50, 51, 55, 92
Bebel, August, 91
Berger, john, 107
Berman, Sandra, 128, 132–34
Bernstein, Charles, 112–15, 117, 118, 128
Best American Poetry 1996 (Rich, ed.), 106–14
Bishop, Elizabeth, 13
blacks, see African Americans
Blake, William, 44, 46
Blaser, Robin, 137
“Blood, Bread, and Poetry” (Rich), 41–61, 170n–71n
body, 64–65
politics of location in, 64–68
truth of, 34, 35
Brand, Dionne, 61, 160
Breaking the Silences (Randall, ed.), 58
Brennan, William, 103–4
Bridges, 144
Brooks, Gwendolyn, 92
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 48
Burgers Daughter (Gordimer), 96
Burlak, Anne, 125
Byron, George Gordon, Lord, 46
California, Proposition 209 in, 117
Cambridge Book of Poetry for Children, The, 44
Capital (Marx), 88
capitalism, 2, 4, 5, 11, 37, 139, 147–49, 163
Marx’s depiction of, 4, 90, 94, 95, 156
women’s liberation and, 56, 57, 116
Cellblock Visions (Kornfeld), 103
censorship, 6, 16 I
Central America, 72
see also Nicaragua
Césaire, Aimé, 102
Char, René, 132, 141
China, People’s Republic of, 148
City College, New York, 55
civilization, Marx’s views on, 94
civil rights movement, 54, 73, 89
“Clarities” (Gelman), 165–66
class, 11, 70, 90, 95, 162
gender vs., 4, 5, 86
intersection of race and, 5, 6, 70
Clinton, Bill, 98–100
Cold War, 45, 49, 51, 72–73
Coleman, Wanda, 113
colonialism, 2, 51, 74, 94
Combahee River Collective, 70, 81, 152
commodity culture, 2–3, 74, 149–50, 156
art vs., 7, 59
poetry and, 7, 111–12, 116
communism, 72, 147–48, 164
primitive, 94
see also anticommunism; Cold War; Soviet Union
Communist party, Soviet, 88
Communist party, U.S., 73, 85
community:
language and, 8, 169n
“lost,” 159
poetry and, 8, 11 5–16
“Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence” (Rich), 69
Congress, V.S., 101, 156
consciousness:
awakening of, 10–11, 27
“false,” 154
language and images for, 12, 134
male, 28, 29
conversation, 161–62
democracy and, 117
lack of, 19–20
Creeley, Robert, 136, 137
Crisis, 161
Cuban women poets, 58, 71
Dahlen, Beverly, 135–36
Daly, Mary 28
Dark Fields of the Republic (Rich), 139, 140
Darwish, Mahmoud, 159–60
“Defying the Space That Separates” (Rich), 106–14
democracy, 9, 72, 107, 164
art and, 103
conversation and, 117
education and, 162
as free enterprise, 147
Democratic party, U.S., 100
Derricotte, Toi, 129
destiny, white delusion of, 57
de Vries, Hendrik, 133
Dfaz-Diocaretz, Myriam, 62
Dickinson, Emily, 16, 170n
Di Prima, Diane, 129
disenfranchised, artists’
connections with, 130–31
domesticity, 19–21, 34, 45
Dream ofa Common Language, The (Rich), 129
Dropkin, Celia, 133
Du Bois, W. E. B., 82
due process, 104
Dunayevskaya, Raya, 6–7, 83–97, 173n–74n
Duncan, Robert, 136–37
DuPlessis, Rachel Dlau, 115, 135–36
Dutch poetry, 133
Eastern Europe, 46, 51, 88, 104, 148
East German workers’ strike (1953), 88
education, 161–63
in arts, 101, 103
political, of students, 154
election of 1980, 140
Emmens, Jan, 133
Engels, Friedrich, 87, 92, 93, 94, 169n
England, 57, 77–78, 140
English, Black vs. Standard, 55
“Ems Turannos” (Robinson), 44
Eshleman, Clayton, 102
ethical responsibility, 3, 141–42
Ethnological Notebooks (Marx), 92, 93–94
existentialism, 51
“experimental” (“innovative”) writing, 113, 114, 135–36
fantasy vs. imagination, 20–21
FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), 45, 53
fear:
of art, 52–53, 104
lying and, 32, 36–37, 38
in McCarthy era, 53
feminism, see women’s liberation movement
Fraser, Kathleen, 135–36
rreedom, 21, 43, 51, 72, 73, 97
capitalism and, 147, 148
of expression, 161
French poetry, 132
Friedman, Susan Stanford, 115
Galeano, Eduardo, 160–61
Gathering of Spirit, A (anthology of North American Indian women), 59–60
Gelman, Juan, 165–66
gender, 139
class vs., 4, 5, 86
intersection of race, class, and, 5
Marx’s interest in, 94
race vs., 5, 70, 86
see also women’s liberation movement
gender differences, poetry and, 128–30
genocide, against tribal peoples, 148, 149
Germany, Weimar Republic of, 140
Ghalib, Mirza, 133
Gibbs, Willard, 125
Gide, André, 51
Ginsberg, Allen, 136, 137
Giscombe, C. S., 113
Golden Treasury The (Palgrave), 44
Gonne, Maud, 16
Gordimer, Nadine, 96, 161
Grahn, Judy, 61, 129, 135–36
Greenberg, Eliezer, 133
Guild Complex, 111
Hahn, Kimiko, 113
“Halfway“ (Rich), 20
Hamer, Fannie Lou, 82
Hansberry, Lorraine, 82, 100, 101
“Harpers Ferry” (Rich), 138
Harrison, Jane, 12, 13
Harvard University, 46–47
H. D. (Hilda Doolittle), 16, 48, 170n
Hegel, G. W. F., 85, 87
Heresies, 30
Herschel, Caroline, 25
Herschel, William, 25
“Her Vision” (Rich), 6
Herzberg, Judith, 133
heterosexuality, 36, 56
Heyen, William, 10
history 49–51, 166–67
double, 107
Jewish view of, 142–43
Hitler, Adolf, 72, 140
Holocaust, 42, 143
homosexuality, 45
see also lesbians
Hongo, Garrett, 155
honor, honorable life, 30–36
difficulties in construction of, 3, 38–40
female, 31, 33, 35
male idea of, 30–31
politicians’ lack of, 31
House Un-American Activities Committee, 101
Howe, Irving, 133
Howe, Susan, 135–36
(How)ever, 135–36
Hughes, Langston, 48
humanism, of Marx, 7, 86, 90, 93
Hungarian Revolution (1956), 88
Ibsen, Henrik, 2, 10
identity(ies), 11, 50
American, 75
fragmented, 49, 60, 138
gender, 135
sexual, 6, 11
white, 67, 109, 110
of writer, 159
“identity politics,” 152–53
illiteracy, 60
images:
race and, 109
of Sisyphus, 6
spiritual power of, 78–79
imagination:
apartheid of, III
art and, 103
autobiographical elements vs., 138
fantasy vs., 20–21
oppositional, 8
subversive function of, 21
imperialism, 46, 54, 57, 90
incarceration, 147, 157–58
“In Defense of the Word” (Galeano), 160–61
India, 148
Indians, American, 59–60, 94, 148
“Inscriptions” (Rich), 136, 139
isolation, 19–20, 28, 33, 51
James, C. L. R., 82
James, Henry, 13
Jewish Quarterly, 138
Jews, 42, 45, 64, 68, 78, 124
history and, 142–43
see also anti-Semitism
Jews Against Genocide, 144
Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, 144
Jogiches, Leo, 95
Jordan, June, 82, 111, 117, 119
Joseph, Gloria I., 82
Just above My Head (Baldwin), 61
justice, 3, 5, 6, 9, 72
Kahlo, Frida, 61
Kautsky, Louise, 9 I
Keats, John, 46
Kertesz, Louise, 121
Khalife, Iman, 79–80
Khrushchev Report, 73
King, Martin Luther, Jr., 6
“Kingfishers, The” (Olson), 136
Korn, Rachel, 133
Kornfeld, Phyllis, 103
Kozol, Jonathan, 163
language, 6, 16
common, 113, 134–35
community and, 8, 169n
of consciousness, 12, 134
degradation of, 7–8, 72, 107, 114, 116–17, 147, 149, 158–59
historical roots of, 72
liberation vs. entrapment by, 11
poetic, 7–8, 108, 109, 113–14, 116–19
poetry as exploration of, 116
politics of, 55
public, disruption of, 7
of Woolf, 14, 170n
Latin American poetry, 133
Lawrence, Jacob, 61
“Leaflets” (Rich), 136, 137
Leaves of Hypnos (Char), 132
Lebanon, 79–80, 159–60
Ledbetter, James, 110
Lehman, David, 106
Lei-Lanilau, Carolyn, 113
Lenin, V. I., 87, 88
Lerner, Gerda, 92
lesbians, 36, 45, 55, 64
LeSueur, Meridel, 53
Levertov, Denise, 136
Levi, Jan Helier, 120
Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 69
Life of Poetry, The (Rukeyser), 126
literacy, 130, 161–62
literature:
apartheid in, 109–11
autobiographical elements vs. imagination in, 138
radical critique of, 11–12
see also specific topics
“Living in the Interregnum” (Gordimer), 96
London Times Literary Supplement, 123
“Long Conversation, A” (Rich), 136, 139, 141
Lorde, Audre, 61, 82, 92, 111, 129
“Loser, The” (Rich), 18–19
Lubbock, John, 93
Luxemburg, Rosa, 90–92, 95–96
McCarthyism, 52–53, 73
Maine, Henry, 93
Malcolm X, 6, 82
male role, for female artist, 13–14
“Marghanita” (Rich), 138
marriage, 19–21, 34, 44, 49
Marx, Karl, 2–5, 8, 63, 64, 69, 145, 156, 157, 166
Dunayevskaya’s views on, 83–97, 173n–74n
humanism of, 7, 86, 90, 93
questions raised by, 102
Marxism, 3–4, 39, 69, 70, 102, 147–48, 164, 169n
Marxism and Freedom (Dunayevskaya),87–89
Massachusetts Review, 146
mass entertainment culture, 7
matriarchy (matrilineal descent), 94, 169n
Matthiessen, Francis Otto, 45–46, 126
meaning, removed from language, 107, 114, 158
“mean-spiritedness,” 156–57
media, 3, 7, 59
“Memo to President Clinton” (Kozol), 163
Mérimée, Prosper, 13
middle class, 147, 157
self-absorption of, 3
Middle East, violence in, 78, 79–80, 159–60
Midnight Salvage (Rich), 132, 134, 139, 141
Millay, Edna St. Vincent, 16, 170n
“Miner’s Wives, The” (Dunayevskaya), 89
Modern Language Association, 10, 123, 128–37
Modotti, Tina, 141
Molodowsky, Kadya, 133, 143
Montgomery bus boycott, 88, 89
Moore, Marianne, 13, 16, 126
Morejón, Nancy, 61
Morgan, Lewis Henry, 93, 94
Morrison, Toni, 113
multiculturalism, 115
Muriel Rukeyser Reader (Levi, ed.), 120
Murray, Gilbert, 12
music, 131–32
myth, 12, 15–16, 21, 50, 124
naming, act of, 11
Nation, 117
National Endowment for the Arts, 99, 101
national liberation movements, 92
National Medal for the Arts, Rich’s refusal of, 98–105, 174n
National Writers’ Voice Project, 111
Native Women in the Arts, 111
New Deal, art and, 104–5
New Jewish Agenda, 144
Nicaragua, 41–42, 58–59, 61, 71–72
Nielsen, Aldon, 109
“Notes toward a Politics of Location” (Rich), 1, 62–82
Olsen, Tillie, 53
Olson, Charles, 136, 137
Oppen, George, 137
oppositional imagination, 8
origins, obsession with, 78–79
“Origins and History of Consciousness” (Rich), 135
Origins of the Family (Engels), 92, 93
“Orion” (Rich), 23–25
Ostriker, Alicia, 115
Our Sister Killjoy (Aidoo), 61
Owen, Maureen, 135–36
Oxford Book of English verse, 44
pain:
communal and public, 114, 149
lying and, 32, 38
truth and, 39
Palestinian state, 144
Paris Review, 112
patriarchy, 28–29, 36, 57, 58, 169n
lying and, 34
as model for other forms of domination, 11, 69–70
Paz, Octavio, 8, 159
Perelman, Bob, 115
personal, the:
in poetry, 109
retreat into, 154–55
“personal is political, the,” 2, 55
personal narrative:
as feminist expression, 2
replacing critical argument, 2–3
Peru, 81
Phear, John Budd, 93, 94
Philosophy and. Revolution (Dunayevskaya),89–90
“Planetarium” (Rich), 25–27
Plath, Sylvia, 12
“Poem Beginning with a Line by Pindar, A” (Duncan), 136–37
“Poem out of Childhood” (Rukeyser), 122
Poetics, A (Bernstein), 112–13
poetics, poetry, 1, 15–29, 41–61, 106–45
avant-garde, 7
commodity culture and, 7, 111–12, 116
complexity and fecundity of, 33
of Cuban women, 58, 71
difference and identity in, 112–13
indestructibility of, 42
language of, 7–8, 108, 109, 113–14, 116–19
maturity in, 114
music of, 131–32
in Nicaragua, 41
out of political experiences, 136
personal, 109
politics and, 28, 41–42, 46–48, 53–55, 58–61, 136
public life and, 115–19, 175n
as revelation, 43
Rukeyser’s definition of, 124
self-absorption in, 112
translation of, 133–34
about women, by men, 15–16
see also specific poems and poets
“Poetry and the Public Sphere” (Rich), 115–19, 175n
“Poetry, Feminism(s) and the Difficult Wor(l)d” (panel), 115, 116
Poetry for the People, 111
politics, politicians, 22
art and, 41–42, 46–61
honorand, 31, 38–39
“identity,” 152–53
of language, 55
of location, 57, 62–82, 171n–73n
lying of, 31
manipulation and, 52
poetry and, 28, 41–42, 46–48, 53–55, 58–61, 136
sexual, 54
women’s movement and, 151–52
Pollitt, Katha, 110
poverty, 5, 157
power, 8–9, 50, 115
lying and, 35
male, 11–13, 28
media, 3, 7
racism and, 109
privacy, 19, 35–36, 38, 56
proletariat, female, 74
public life:
commodity culture in control of, 2–3
poetry and, 115–19, 175n
and private life, 55–56
publishing industry, 154–55, 161
Quartermain, Peter, 128, 134–37
race, 2, 8, 50
class vs., 5, 70
gender vs., 5, 70, 86
intersection of class and, 5, 6, 70
poetry and, 109–11
see also Mrican Americans; whites
racism, 5, 36, 46, 47, 57, 95, 109
Baldwin’s views on, 51
Randall, Margaret, 58
“Raya Dunayevskaya’s Marx” (Rich), 4, 83–97, 173n–74n
“Readings of History” (Rich), 142
Reagan, Ronald, 3, 140
Reagon, Bemice, 82
Republican party, U.S., 100
Retallack, Joan, 135–36
re-vision:
need for, 11–12
writing as, 10–29
revolution, 41
avant-garde tradition and, 7
experience and, 84
permanent (continuing), 88, 96, 116
resistance of women in, 94
“total,” 93
women’s liberation and, 116
Rexroth, Kenneth, 123
Ridge, Lola, 121
Robinson, Edwin Arlington, 44
Room of One’s Own, A (Woolf), 14, 170n
Rosa Luxemburg, Womens Liberation and Marxs Philosophy of Revolution (Dunayevskaya), 83, 85, 90–92, 93, 95–96
Rossetti, Christina, 16
Rowbotham, Sheila, 77, 92
Rukeyser, Muriel, 48, 102, 108, 120–27, 175n
background of, 121–22
critical assessment of, 123
as Jew, 124
as mentor, 6, 123, 126
Rushdie, 8alman, 161
Russell, Michele, 82
Russian poetry, 132–33
Russian revolution, 88, 90
Said, Edward, 45
Salt Eaters, The (Bambara), 61
Sand, George, 13
Sandinistas, 59
Sappho, 16, 78
Satanic Verses (Rushdie), 161
science, Rukeyser's view of, 123, 124, 125
Seidman, Hugh, 137
self-absorption:
middle class, 3
in poetry, 112
self-knowledge, 11
sex, sexuality, 13, 22, 55, 56, 139
lying and, 34, 36
sexual identity, change in concept of, 6, 11
Shakespeare, William, 14, 28
Shaw, George Bernard, 10
silence, 150–51
art as breaker of, 99
dead, 151
lying with, 31, 34, 36
poetry and, 109
political, 154
of unconscious, 32
Silver Pennies (anthology), 44
Simone, Nina, 61
Sisyphus, image of, 6
Sitt Mane Rose (Adnan), 80
slavery, slave trade, 88, 94, 101, 148, 149
“Sleepwalking Next to Death” (Rich), 133
Smith, Barbara, 82
Smith, Lillian, 72
Snapshots ofa Daughter-in-Law (Rich), 129, 136, 139
“Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law” (Rich), 23, 141
Snyder, Gary, 8
socialism, 56, 57, 72, 147–48, 164
Socialist Workers party, 89
Sontag, Susan, 3
South Africa, 78, 79, 148
South African Politics (book), 79
Soviet Union, 46, 49, 72, 88
spiritual power of images, 78–79
Stalin, joseph, 87, 88
Stalinism, 4, 72, 88
Stevens, Wallace, 46, 126
Stewart, Susan, 128, 134
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, 87
suffering, personal or familial, 114
survival:
lying for, 34–35
re-vision for, 11, 13
Taggard, Genevieve, 121
Tanenhaus, Beverley, 30
Tanning, Dorothea, 159
technological change, technology, 1, 2, 8, 19, 60, 158, 163–64
Thatcher, Margaret, 140
Theory of Flight (Rukeyser), 122, 126
Third World, 74, 88, 90, 93
This Bridge Called My Back (anthology), 82
Three Guineas (Woolf), 57, 63
Time’s Power (Rich), 138
translations, 133–34
Treasury of Yiddish Poetry, A (Howe and Greenberg, eds.), 133
Trotsky, Leon, 87, 92
Trotsky, Natalia, 92
Truth, Sojourner, 82
United States, 62–64
delusion of destiny in, 57
double history of, 107
McCarthy era in, 52–53, 73
military-“private” sector link in, 74
politics of location of, 71–72, 74, 75
radical movements in, 5, 73, 84, 87, 89
Untermeyer, Louis, 44
Urdu poetry, 133
Valerio, Anita, 59–60
van Geel, Chr. J., 133
Vietnam War, 8, 54–55
violence, 6, 50, 63, 78, 148
in Middle East, 78, 79–80, 159–60
Vroman, Leo, 133
Wakoski, Diane, 12
Watkins, Mary, 61
wealth, 5, 99
accumulation of, 101, 104
Weimar Republic, 140
welfare, 5
Wells-Barnett, Ida B., 82
West Virginia miners' strike (1949–50), 84, 87, 89
What Is Found There (Rich), 7, 142
When We Dead Awaken (Ibsen), 2, 10
“When We Dead Awaken” (Rich), 2, 10–29, 170n
“White Night” (Molodowsky), 133
whites, 49, 57
identity of, 67, 109, 110
literary magazines and, 109, 110
poetry of, 109
politics of location and, 70–71, 74, 77–78, 81–82
“Why I Refused the National Medal for the Arts” (Rich), 98–105, 174n
Williams, William Carlos, 126, 136
Willkie, Wendell, 124
Will to Change, The (Rich), 129, 136
Wolf, Christa, 75
Wollstonecraft, Mary, 50–51, 141
Woman Is Talking to Death, A (Grahn), 135–36
“Woman Question,” Luxemburg’s views on, 91
woman writers, male judgment on, 13–14, 15, 170n
women:
anger of, 13, 14, 27–28, 56, 82
as luxury, 10, 13
lying of, 31–35
male artist and thinker’s use of, 10–13, 15–16, 28
in miner’s strike, 87, 89
“Women and Honor” (Rich), 3–4, 30–40
Women, Feminist Identity and Society in the 1980s (Díaz-Diocaretz and Zavala, eds.), 62
women’s culture, 5, 71
Womens Liberation and the Dialectics of Revolution (Dunayevskaya), 83, 87, 89, 92
women’s liberation movement (feminism), 1–6, 11, 55–57, 65, 151–53
anti-Marxism of, 3–4, 39, 69
as self-involvement or selfimprovement, 3
black, 70, 81–82
Dunayevskaya and, 84, 86–87, 89, 91, 92, 93, 95
Marx and, 86, 93
personal narrative as expression of, 2
poetry and, 129–30
politics of location and, 62–82
radical, 15, 69, 70, 86
revolution and, 116
shortcomings of, 5
sources of, 73, 82
women’s culture vs., 5
Woolf, Virginia, 14–15, 27–28, 37, 57, 63
Wordsworth, William, 45, 129
Working Class Kitchen, The, III
Work ofa Common Woman, The (Grahn), 135–36
writing:
out of one’s time, 159–61
as re-vision, 10–29
Wylie, Elinor, 16
Yale Younger Poets Prize, 122, 126
Yeats, William Butler, 46–49
Yiddish poetry, 133
“Yom Kippur 1984” (Rich), 136
Zabielski, Laverne, 111
Zaturenska, Marya, 121
Zavala, Iris, 62
Zetkin, Clara, 91