Feminist poet Adrienne Rich dies March 27, 2012 aged 82

This link to a biography of Adrienne Rich.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/29/books/adrienne-rich-feminist-poet-and-author-dies-at-82.html?_r=1

The purpose of the poem, a real poem, in Adrienne Rich’s view. as the breaking of an existing silence will stay with me.  I ask with her:

 “What kind of voice is breaking silence, and what kind of silence is being broken?” (p. 150).

Rich, A. (2001). Arts of the possible: Essays and conversations. New York: Norton &

Company.

 

I too have always wondered about the “left-over energy” of our beloved dead. Here is Adrienne Rich’s poem on this subject.

For the Dead

I dreamed I called you on the telephone
to say: Be kinder to yourself
but you were sick and would not answer

The waste of my love goes on this way
trying to save you from yourself

I have always wondered about the left-over
energy, the way water goes rushing down a hill
long after the rains have stopped

or the fire you want to go to bed from
but cannot leave, burning-down but not burnt-down
the red coals more extreme, more curious
in their flashing and dying
than you wish they were
sitting long after midnight

Adrienne Rich

~ by artpoped on March 29, 2012.