RICH, ADRIENNE

born May 16, 1929, Baltimore, Md., U.S. in full Adrienne Cecile Rich American poet, scholar, teacher, and critic whose many volumes of poetry trace a stylistic transformation from formal, well-crafted but imitative poetry to a more personal and powerful style. Rich attended Radcliffe College (B.A., 1951), and before her graduation her poetry was chosen by W.H. Auden for publication in the Yale Younger Poets series. The resulting volume, A Change of World (1951), reflected her mastery of the formal elements of poetry and her considerable restraint. The Diamond Cutters and Other Poems (1955) was followed by Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law (1963), published long after her earlier volumes. This third collection exhibited a change in style, a movement away from the restrained and formal to a looser, more personal form. Her fourth volume, Necessities of Life (1966), was written almost entirely in free verse. In 1966 she separated from her husband (who committed suicide in 1970). Throughout the 1960s and '70s her increasing commitment to the women's movement and to a lesbian/feminist aesthetic politicized much of her poetry. Among her later volumes of verse are Leaflets (1969), Diving into the Wreck (1973; National Book Award), The Dream of a Common Language (1978), A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far (1981), An Atlas of the Difficult World (1991), Dark Fields of the Republic: Poems 19911995 (1995), Selected Poems 1950-1995 (1996), and Midnight Salvage: Poems 1995-1998 (1999). Her Collected Early Poems 19501970 was published in 1993. In addition to these and other volumes of selected poetry, Rich also wrote several books of criticism, including Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (1976), On Lies, Secrets, and Silence (1979), Blood, Bread, and Poetry (1986), and What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics (1993).