LIT 132w: Rich / Dark Fields of the Republic

LIT 132: Comparative American Literatures
Summer 2001

Adrienne Rich, Dark Fields of the Republic (1995)
One of the foremost American poets and essayists of the latter half of the 20th century, Rich is known for her uncompromisingly personal and political writing. She has won -- although not always accepted -- nearly every major literary award in the United States (see web link section). Rich is particularly interested in the relationship between language and social change. Rich's other works include:
• Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law (1963)
• Diving into the Wreck (1973)
• Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (1976)
• The Dream of a Common Language (1978)
• On Lies, Secrets, and Silence (1979)
• Blood, Bread, and Poetry (1986)
• An Atlas of the Difficult World (1991)

Pre-reading questions:

A general suggestion: As you read Dark Fields of the Republic -- much as we recommended when we tackled Magic City -- take time to linger over individual poems, marking particularly striking lines, words, and images. Try not to rush through them. These are challenging poems, and it will pay to read them slowly and carefully. At the same time, be sure to think a bit about the collection as a whole. Do the poems fit together in some way? Is there a particular sequence to them, for example, or a set of common concerns? A thread of common images? Which ones? How are they used?
Rich has not only titled this collection "Dark Fields of the Republic" -- a phrase taken from the last page of Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby -- she has used the paragraph in which that phrase appears as the collection's epigraph. How does Rich intend us to understand the reference to Gatsby? What do these "dark fields" signify? Is this book in some way also a comment on Fitzgerald's novel? If so, how so?
For that matter, think back over other texts we've read so far, both in this unit ("Promised Land") and the previous unit ("Home Ground"). What points of connection -- or of contrast -- do you see between Rich's book and, say, The House on Mango Street? Typical American? Something else?
You'll notice that the collection consists of an alternation between groups of poems and individual poems. What is the effect of this kind of patterning? Do you find yourself more interested in the grouped poems or the individual ones? Why?
Select one of the poem groupings -- "What Kind of Times are These," "Calle Visión," "Then or Now," "Sending Love," "Six Narratives," or "Inscriptions" -- and look closely at the poems within that group. What is the organizing principle at work? How is this particular group of poems made into a coherent unit?
Rich is very particular about the way her poems appear on the page. You'll likely notice, for example, that not all the lines are flush left, nor are the spacings between words always the same width. Colons (or marks that look like colons) sometimes appear out of their normal grammatical position. What effects do these physical or spatial (or, simply, 'formal') characteristics have on your reading of these poems? What do you think Rich is trying to accomplish through these particular disruptions of form? (You might try to answer this question for yourself both generally and in relation to one or two particular poems. Bring your thoughts to precept.)
As you read each poem, ask yourself: who is speaking here? What kind of a voice is this? Is it a woman's voice? A man's voice? Is the "I" in each poem always the same "I"?
"The body in pain is the body most passionately understood by Rich," one critic has argued. What bodies are in pain in this collection, and why?
As we have done with every text so far, pay special attention to the very ending of the book. What sort of closure does "Edgelit" provide this collection? To what extent is the final image -- "the updraft of this life / still roaring / into thinnest air" -- a fitting endpoint for this book?

Web links:

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