This text explores the ideas of the influential lesbian feminist poet, Adrienne Rich, covering such topics as: feminist struggles; the focus on the "body"; the spiritual continuity of women's history; and "the dynamic between poetry as language and poetry as a kind of action".

Adrienne Rich is a major American poet who continues to be inspired by the political ideas and activism of various liberation movements of the twentieth century. Whether expressed in poetry or in prose, her ideas have been much debated, particularly within second wave feminism. This unique introduction focuses on Rich's prose work but also makes reference to the poetry where her political ideas and urgencies often find their first expression. Demonstrating the compexity and subtlety of her contribution to feminism, the book outlines her wide-ranging thoughts on, for example, motherhood, heterosexuality, lesbian and Jewish identity, and issues of racial and sexual otherness. Liz Yorke conveys the range and importance of Rich's achievements and highlights the major themes which are interwoven in her work.

'What I Know, I Know through Making Poems'

Feminist Beginnings in the Early Poetry Reversing the Going Logic

How Hear the Women 'To Her Own Speech' Embodied Experience

Passion and Politics in /f003Of Woman Born Lesbian Identity, Compulsory Heterosexuality and 'The Common "Woman"' Back to the Body, Back to Earth

Concrete Experience as 'The Core of Revolutionary Process' Inside and Outside, Centre and Margin, Jew and Gentile

The Contradictory World of Multiple, Threshold Identity