"I came to explore the wreck. / The words are purposes. / The words are maps. / I came to see the damage that was done / and the treasures that prevail." These provocative poems move with the power of Rich's distinctive voice.

In Of Woman Born, originally published in 1976, influential poet and feminist Adrienne Rich examines the patriarchic systems and political institutions that define motherhood. Exploring her own experience-as a woman, a poet, a feminist and a mother-she finds the act of mothering to be both determined by and distinct from the institution of motherhood as it is imposed on all women everywhere. A "powerful blend of research, theory, and self-reflection" (Sandra M. Gilbert, Paris Review), Of Woman Born revolutionised how women thought about motherhood and their own liberation. With a stirring new foreword from National Book Critics Circle Award-winning writer Eula Biss, the book resounds with as much wisdom and insight today as when it was first written.

At issue are the politics of language; the uses of scholarship; and the topics of racism, history, and motherhood among others called forth by Rich as "part of the effort to define a female consciousness which is political, aesthetic, and erotic, and which refuses to be included or contained in the culture of passivity."

The poetry of Muriel Rukeyser (1913-80) confronts the turbulent currents of modern history as it explores with depth and honesty the realms of politics, sexuality, mythic imagination, technological change and family life. Rukeyser was a social activist of unwavering commitment, a tireless experimenter who opened fresh forms and fresh subject-matter in modern American poetry, and a writer who was constantly testing her own limits in a life's work of extraordinary scope. She held a visionary belief in the human capacity to create social change through language, and earned an international reputation as a powerful voice against enforced silences of all kind, against the violence of war, poverty and racism. Edited and introduced by Adrienne Rich, this new selection provides an indispensable introduction to the adventurous and prolific work of one of the most significant and influential American poets of the 20th century.

Adrienne Rich whose poetry is “distinguished by an unswerving progressive vision and a dazzling, empathic ferocity� (The New York Times) was the singular voice of her generation. She brought discussions of gender, race and class to the forefront of poetical discourse, pushing formal boundaries and consistently examining both self and society. This volume traces the evolution of Rich’s poetry, from her earliest, formally exact and decorous work to her later poems, which became increasingly radical in both form and content. Displaying the entire body of Rich’s poetry, The Collected Poems gathers and commemorates all Rich’s boldly political, formally ambitious, thoughtful and lucid work.

The Essential Essays gathers twenty-five of Adrienne Rich's most renowned essays, demonstrating the lasting brilliance of her voice and her prophetic vision. Her thoughts on feminism, poetry, race, homosexuality and identity are still powerful and relevant today. Discussing everything from her fearless poetic vision to her revolutionary views on social justice, Rich's essays unite the political, personal and poetical. Included are Rich's landmark essays "Motherhood as Experience and Institution"; "What Is Found There"; "Why I Refused the National Medal for the Arts" and "Compulsory Heterosexuality and the Lesbian Existence". As Sandra Gilbert writes, "To re-read and to re-think Rich's prose as a complete oeuvre is to encounter a major public intellectual..."

The experience is her own as a woman, a poet, a feminist, and a mother but it is an experience determined by the institution, imposed on all women everywhere. She draws on personal materials, history, research, and literature to create a document of universal importance."

Author of more than thirty books, Adrienne Rich was the singular voice of her generation, bringing discussions of gender, race and class to the forefront of poetical discourse. Selected Poems offers a full and representative selection of poems from the whole of Rich’s long and distinguished career. The volume encompasses her best-known work—the clear-sighted and passionate feminist poems of the 1970s, including “Diving into the Wreck�, “Planetarium�, and “The Phenomenology of Anger�—and offers the full range of her evolution as a poet. From poems leading up to her feminist breakthrough through bold later work such as “North American Time� and “Calle Visión�, Selected Poems expresses the vital dialogue between Rich’s personal experiences and political views. As the editors explain in their introduction, Selected Poems presents the complete picture of Rich’s powerful and deeply moving poetry, as well as the evolution in poetic forms that trace her radical vision.

In Later Poems: Selected and New 1971-2012, the strong trajectory of the work of one of the most important artists of American letters is on display. This volume brings together a remarkable body of work. Included are Adrienne Rich's own selections from twelve volumes of published works, including the National Book Award-winning Diving Into the Wreck, An Atlas of the Difficult World, and her most recent volume, Tonight No Poetry Will Serve, along with ten powerful new poems, previously uncollected. Among these, "From Strata" is a kind of archaeology of the present day; "Itinerary" searches for an "indefinite future" in a menaced landscape; "For the Young Anarchists" offers a trope of skilled labor for political action; and the haunting voice of "Teethsucking Bird" reminds us of what we have been told to forget. This collection testifies to a monumental career that distinguished American literature in the late twentieth century and will continue to inspire readers for years to come.

The Essential Essays gathers twenty-five of Adrienne Rich’s most renowned essays, demonstrating the lasting brilliance of her voice and her prophetic vision. Her thoughts on feminism, poetry, race, homosexuality and identity are still powerful and relevant today. Discussing everything from her fearless poetic vision to her revolutionary views on social justice, Rich’s essays unite the political, personal and poetical. Included are Rich’s landmark essays “Motherhood as Experience and Institution�; “What Is Found There�; “Why I Refused the National Medal for the Arts� and “Compulsory Heterosexuality and the Lesbian Existence�. As Sandra Gilbert writes, “To re-read and to re-think Rich’s prose as a complete oeuvre is to encounter a major public intellectual...�

"The Dream of a Common Language explores the contours of a woman's heart and mind in language for everybody-language whose plainness, laughter, questions and nobility everyone can respond to. . . . No one is writing better or more needed verse than this."-Boston Evening Globe

A Change of World was selected by W. H. Auden for the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award. Out of print for decades, this initial collection launched the career of a poet whose work has been crucial to discussions of gender, race and class, pushing formal boundaries and consistently examining both self and society.

Adrienne Rich's Later Poems Selected and New displays the strong trajectory of the work of one of the most distinguished artists of American letters. After her death Rich left a manuscript that speaks for her concern with a poetics of relation along with a passionate attention to craft. In addition to her selections from twelve volumes of published work, Later Poems Selected and New contains ten powerful new poems. Among these, "From Strata" is a kind of archaeology of the present day; "Itinerary" searches for an "indefinite future" in a menaced landscape; "For the Young Anarchists" offers a trope of skilled labour for political action; and the haunting voice of the "Teethsucking Bird" reminds us of what we have been told to forget. These and other poems look back into history and forward into the future while engaging with contemporary moments. Rich's singular command of language continues to the end.

Here is the good stuff: poetry written by women that actually excites the thinking reader. This anthology, spanning work of the last 75 years, will broaden its readers' notions of what defines erotic poetry. For what is more intriguing, more satisfying than strong, self-assured writing? This groundbreaking anthology includes some of our most powerful women writers-among them Sharon Olds, Elizabeth Alexander, Anne Sexton, Dorianne Laux, Denise Levertov, Adrienne Rich, Lucille Clifton, and Louise Gluck. These poets fully demonstrate that, far from being prurient, the erotic can permeate even the most mundane aspects of life, from reading a book to buying clothes. At the same time, the collection affirms the enormous meaningfulness of poetry-its ability to express the inexpressible and to illuminate the most private and intimate of human experiences. The poets included here represent different ethnicities, geographies, social classes, and sexual preferences. The only characteristic they share is that they are women writing about sex.

"Rich is one of the greatest American poets of the past half century . . . attested to both by the extraordinary power of her poems and by the laurels she's racked up. . . . The events of our blood-dimmed decade have afforded Rich a subject for some of her strongest material."-Sara Marcus, San Francisco Chronicle

In both poetry and prose, the editors have chosen selections intended to give readers a clear sense of Adrienne Rich's evolution and accomplishment. Accompanying this is the latest selection of study on her life and work.

Anne Bradstreet was one of our earliest feminists and the first true poet in the American colonies. This collection of her extant poetry and prose, scrupulously edited by Jeannine Hensley, has long been the standard edition of Bradstreet's work. Hensley's introduction sketches the poet's life, and Adrienne Rich's foreword offers a sensitive critique of Bradstreet as a person and as a writer. The John Harvard Library edition includes a chronology of Bradstreet's life and an updated bibliography.

"The Fact of a Doorframe" is the ideal introduction to Rich's opus, from her formative lyricism in "A Change of Word" (1951), to the groundbreaking poems of "Diving into the Wreck" (1973), to the searching voice of "Fox" (2001).

A new volume from Adrienne Rich, recipient of the National Book Foundation's 2006 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.
"Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth" is one of Adrienne Rich's most unpredictable and evocative collections. In the folk/blues tradition behind "Rhyme," in the incantatory pattern of "Behind the Motel," in the voices from past and present in "Letters Censored, Shredded, Returned to Sender or Judged Unfit to Send," in the dystopic scenes and intimate encounters of "Draft # 2006," in the mysterious negotiations of the title poem, the tempos and moods of this book constantly vary. Here, Rich draws on the artistic means of a lifetime.

Examining the connections between history and the imagination, ethics and action, she explores the possible meanings of being white, female, lesbian, Jewish, and a United States citizen, both at this particular time and through the lens of the past.

From their first publication, when Rich was twenty-one, in the prestigious Yale Younger Poets series, the successive volumes of her poetry have both charted the growth of her own mind and vision and mirrored our tempestuous, unsettled age. Her unmistakable voice, speaking even from the earliest poems with rare assurance and precision, wrestles with urgent questions while never failing to explore new poetic territory. In Collected Early Poems, readers will once again bear witness to Rich's triumphant assertion of the centrality of poetry in our intertwined personal and political lives.

"Adrienne Rich's new prose collection could have been titled The Essential Rich."—Women's Review of Books

These essays trace a distinguished writer's engagement with her time, her arguments with herself and others. "I am a poet who knows the social power of poetry, a United States citizen who knows herself irrevocably tangled in her society's hopes, arrogance, and despair," Adrienne Rich writes. The essays in Arts of the Possible search for possibilities beyond a compromised, degraded system, seeking to imagine something else. They call on the fluidity of the imagination, from poetic vision to social justice, from the badlands of political demoralization to an art that might wound, that may open scars when engaged in its work, but will finally suture and not tear apart. This volume collects Rich's essays from the last decade of the twentieth century, including four earlier essays, as well as several conversations that go further than the usual interview. Also included is her essay explaining her reasons for declining the National Medal for the Arts.

"The work is inspired and inspiring."—Alicia Ostriker

"[S]o clear and clean and thorough. I learn from her again and again."—Grace Paley

Companion Spider is the accumulated work of a poet and translator who goes more deeply into the art and its process and demands than anyone since Robert Duncan. Clayton Eshleman is one of our most admired and controversial poets, the translator of such great international poets as Cesar Vallejo, Aime Cesaire and Antonin Artaud, and founder and editor of two important literary magazines, Sulfur and Caterpillar. As such, Eshleman writes about the vocation of poet and of the poet as translator as no one else in America today; he believes adamantly that art must concern itself with vision, and that poets learn best by an apprenticeship that is a kind of immersion in the work of other poets.
Companion Spider opens with a unique eighty page essay called "Novices: A Study of Poetic Apprenticeship" addressed to the poet who is just starting out. Subsequent sections take up the art of translation, poets and their work, and literary magazine editing. The title is drawn from an extraordinary visionary experience which the author had, which becomes a potent metaphor for the creative process. Through the variety of poets and artists to whom he pays homage, Eshleman suggests a community which is not of a single place or time; rather, there is mutual recognition and responsiveness, so that the reader becomes aware of a range of artistic practices s/he might explore