Editing Adrienne Rich (section)

==Early career: 1953–75==
In 1953, Rich married [[Alfred Haskell Conrad]], an economics professor at [[Harvard University]] she had met as an undergraduate. She said of the match: "I married in part because I knew no better way to disconnect from my first family.  I wanted what I saw as a full woman's life, whatever was possible."<ref Name="Pioneer"/> They settled in [[Cambridge, Massachusetts]], and had three sons. In 1955, she published her second volume, ''The Diamond Cutters'', a collection she said she wished had not been published, saying "a lot of the poems are incredibly derivative," and citing a "pressure to produce again... to make sure I was still a poet."<ref Name="Pioneer"/> That year she also received the Ridgely Torrence Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America.<ref name="Langdell"/> Her three children were born in 1955 (David), 1957 (Pablo) and 1959 (Jacob).

{{quote box |width=300px |align=right |bgcolor=#FFFFF0 |salign=right
 |quote  ={{poemquote|
We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear.}}
 |source = —From "Diving into the Wreck"<br /> ''[[Diving into the Wreck: Poems 1971–1972]]'' (1973)<ref name="legend">{{cite web |url=http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15228 |title=Diving into the Wreck |publisher=The Academy of American Poets |access-date=March 29, 2012 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120329124018/http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15228 |archive-date=March 29, 2012  }}</ref>}}

The 1960s began a period of change in Rich's life: she received the National Institute of Arts and Letters award (1960), her second Guggenheim Fellowship to work at the Netherlands Economic Institute (1961), and the [[Bollingen Foundation]] grant for the translation of Dutch poetry (1962).<ref Name="Langdell">{{cite book|last=Langdell|first=Cherl Colby|title=Adrienne Rich: The Moment of Change|year=2004|publisher=Praeger Publishers|location=Westport, CT|pages=xv}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=American Academy of Arts and Letters |url=http://www.artsandletters.org/awards2_popup.php?abbrev=Academy |work=American Academy of Arts and Letter Award Winners |access-date=December 12, 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081013232000/http://www.artsandletters.org/awards2_popup.php?abbrev=Academy |archive-date=October 13, 2008 }}</ref><ref Name="Shuman1281"/> 

In 1963, Rich published her third collection, ''Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law'', which was a much more personal work examining her female identity, reflecting the increasing tensions she experienced as a wife and mother in the 1950s, marking a substantial change in Rich's style and subject matter. In her 1982 essay "[[Split at the Root: An Essay on Jewish Identity]]", Rich states: "The experience of motherhood was eventually to radicalize me." The book met with harsh reviews. She comments, "I was seen as 'bitter' and 'personal'; and to be personal was to be disqualified, and that was very shaking because I'd really gone out on a limb ... I realised I'd gotten slapped over the wrist, and I didn't attempt that kind of thing again for a long time."<ref Name="Pioneer"/>

Moving her family to New York in 1966, Rich became involved with the [[New Left]] and became heavily involved in anti-war, civil rights, and feminist activism. Her husband took a teaching position at [[City College of New York]].<ref Name="Shuman1281"/> 

In 1968, she signed the "[[Writers and Editors War Tax Protest]]" pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.<ref>"Writers and Editors War Tax Protest", January 30, 1968, ''New York Post''.</ref> Her collections from this period include ''Necessities of Life'' (1966), ''Leaflets'' (1969), and ''The Will to Change'' (1971), which reflect increasingly radical political content and interest in poetic form.<ref Name="Shuman1281"/>

From 1967 to 1969, Rich lectured at [[Swarthmore College]] and taught at Columbia University School of the Arts as an adjunct professor in the Writing Division. Additionally, in 1968, she began teaching in the SEEK program in City College of New York, a position she continued until 1975.<ref Name="Langdell"/> During this time, Rich also received the Eunice Tietjens Memorial Prize from ''Poetry Magazine''.<ref Name="Langdell"/> Rich and Conrad hosted anti-war and Black Panther fundraising parties at their apartment. Rising tensions began to split the marriage, and Rich moved out in mid-1970, getting herself a small studio apartment nearby.<ref Name="Pioneer"/><ref>Michelle Dean, [https://newrepublic.com/article/132117/adrienne-richs-feminist-awakening "The Wreck: Adrienne Rich's feminist awakening, glimpsed through her never-before-published letters."], ''The New Republic'', April 3, 2016.</ref> Shortly afterward, in October, Conrad drove into the woods and shot himself, widowing Rich.<ref name=NYTobit>{{Citation| title = Dr. Alfred H. Conrad, City College Professor, Dies | newspaper = The New York Times | location = New York, New York| date = October 20, 1970| url = https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1970/10/20/78818847.pdf}}</ref><ref Name="Pioneer"/><ref Name="Shuman1281"/>

In 1971, she was the recipient of the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America and spent the next year and a half teaching at [[Brandeis University]] as the Hurst visiting professor of creative writing.<ref Name="Langdell"/> ''Diving into the Wreck'', a collection of exploratory and often angry poems, split the 1974 [[National Book Award for Poetry]] with [[Allen Ginsberg]], ''The Fall of America''.<ref name=nba1974/><ref name="Poets.org">{{cite web|title=Poets.org|url=http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/49|work=Adrienne Rich|access-date=December 12, 2011}}</ref>  Declining to accept it individually, Rich was joined by the two other feminist poets nominated, [[Alice Walker]] and [[Audre Lorde]], to accept it on behalf of all women "whose voices have gone and still go unheard in a patriarchal world."<ref Name="Shuman1276">Shuman (2002)  p1276</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=National Book Foundation|url=http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/adrienne-rich|work=National Book Awards Acceptance Speeches|access-date=September 13, 2014}}</ref> The following year, Rich took up the position of the Lucy Martin Donnelly Fellow at [[Bryn Mawr College]].<ref>{{cite web|title=The Poetry Foundation|url=http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/adrienne-rich|work=Adrienne Rich|access-date=December 12, 2011}}</ref>