Editing Adrienne Rich (section)

==Later life: 1976–2012==
[[File:Audre Lorde, Meridel Lesueur, Adrienne Rich 1980.jpg|thumb|Rich (right), with writers [[Audre Lorde]] (left) and [[Meridel Le Sueur]] (middle) in Austin, Texas, 1980]]
In 1976, Rich began her partnership with Jamaican-born novelist and editor [[Michelle Cliff]], which lasted until her death. In her controversial work ''Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution'', published the same year, Rich acknowledged that, for her, lesbianism was a political as well as a personal issue, writing, "The suppressed lesbian I had been carrying in me since adolescence began to stretch her limbs."<ref Name="Pioneer"/> The pamphlet ''Twenty-One Love Poems'' (1977), which was incorporated into the following year's ''Dream of a Common Language'' (1978), marked the first direct treatment of lesbian desire and sexuality in her writing, themes which run throughout her work afterwards, especially in ''A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far'' (1981) and some of her late poems in ''The Fact of a Doorframe'' (2001).<ref>Aldrich and Wotherspoon (2000) ''Who's Who in Gay and Lesbian History, Vol 2''. Routledge p352 {{ISBN|0-415-22974-X}}.</ref> In her analytical work ''Adrienne Rich: the moment of change'', Langdell suggests these works represent a central rite of passage for the poet, as she (Rich) crossed a threshold into a newly constellated life and a "new relationship with the universe".<ref>Langdell, Cheri Colby (2004) ''Adrienne Rich: the moment of change''. p159 Praeger Publishers {{ISBN|0-313-31605-8}}</ref>  During this period, Rich also wrote a number of key socio-political essays, including "[[Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence]]", one of the first to address the theme of lesbian existence.<ref Name="Pioneer">{{cite web |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2002/jun/15/featuresreviews.guardianreview6 |website=The Guardian |title=Poet and pioneer |date=15 June 2002 |access-date=August 10, 2010 |first1=John |last1=O'Mahoney}}</ref> In this essay, she asks "how and why women's choice of women as passionate comrades, life partners, co-workers, lovers, community, has been crushed, invalidated, forced into hiding".<ref Name="Pioneer"/> Some of the essays were republished in ''[[On Lies, Secrets and Silence]]: Selected Prose, 1966–1978'' (1979). In integrating such pieces into her work, Rich claimed her sexuality and took a role in leadership for sexual equality.<ref Name="Pioneer"/>

From 1976 to 1979, Rich taught at City College and [[Rutgers University]] as an English professor. In 1979, she received an honorary doctorate from Smith College and moved with Cliff to Montague, MA. Ultimately, they moved to Santa Cruz, where Rich continued her career as a professor, lecturer, poet, and essayist. Rich and Cliff took over editorship of the lesbian arts journal ''[[Sinister Wisdom]]'' (1981–1983).<ref>[http://www.sinisterwisdom.org/about.html#history Sinister Wisdom history] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120208094710/http://www.sinisterwisdom.org/about.html |date=February 8, 2012 }}</ref><ref Name="CAWP"/> Rich taught and lectured at [[UC Santa Cruz]], [[Scripps College]], [[San Jose State University]], and [[Stanford University]] during the 1980s and 1990s.<ref Name="CAWP">Cucinella, Catherine (2002)  ''Contemporary American women poets: an A-to-Z guide''. p295 Greenwood Press {{ISBN|0-313-31783-6}}</ref> From 1981 to 1987, Rich served as an A.D. White Professor-At-Large for [[Cornell University]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://adwhiteprofessors.cornell.edu/all.html |title=Andrew D. White Professors-At-Large |publisher=Cornell University |access-date=March 28, 2012}}</ref> Rich published several volumes in the next few years: ''Your Native Land, Your Life'' (1986), ''Blood, Bread, and Poetry'' (1986), and ''Time's Power: Poems 1985–1988'' (1989). She also was awarded the Ruth Paul Lilly Poetry Prize (1986), the Elmer Holmes Bobst Award in Arts and Letters from [[NYU]], and the National Poetry Association Award for Distinguished Service to the Art of Poetry (1989).<ref Name="Langdell"/><ref name="Poets.org"/>

In 1977, Rich became an associate of the [[Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press]] (WIFP).<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.wifp.org/who-we-are/associates/|title=Associates {{!}} The Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press|website=www.wifp.org|language=en-US|access-date=June 21, 2017}}</ref> WIFP is an American nonprofit publishing organization. The organization works to increase communication between women and connect the public with forms of women-based media.

[[Janice Raymond]], in the foreword of her 1979 book ''[[The Transsexual Empire]]'', thanked Rich for "constant encouragement"<ref name="What Kind of Times are These">{{cite web|last1=Boylan|first1=Jennifer|url=http://jenniferboylan.net/what-kind-of-times-are-these-on-adrienne-rich-and-trans-misogyny/|title=What Kind of Times are These?|website=www.jenniferboylan.net|date=April 18, 2012|language=en-US|access-date=March 5, 2021}}</ref> and cited her in the book's chapter "Sappho by Surgery."<ref name="Was Adrienne Rich Anti-Trans">{{cite web|last1=Mukhopadhyay|first1=Samhita|url=https://prospect.org/civil-rights/adrienne-rich-anti-trans/|title=Was Adrienne Rich Anti-Trans?|website=www.prospect.org|date=April 16, 2012|language=en-US|access-date=March 5, 2021}}</ref> "The Transsexual Empire" has been criticized by a number of LGBT and feminist writers for its [[anti-trans]] stance,<ref>Rose, Katrina C. (2004) "The Man Who Would be Janice Raymond." ''Transgender Tapestry'' 104, Winter 2004</ref><ref>Julia Serano (2007) ''Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity'', pp. 233–234</ref><ref>Namaste, Viviane K. (2000) ''Invisible Lives: The Erasure of Transsexual and Transgendered People'', pp. 33–34.</ref><ref>Hayes, Cressida J., 2003, "Feminist Solidarity after Queer Theory: The Case of Transgender," in ''Signs'' 28(4):1093–1120.</ref> and many have criticized Rich for her involvement in and support of its production. While Rich never explicitly disavowed her support for Raymond's work, [[Leslie Feinberg]] cites Rich as having been supportive during Feinberg's writing of ''[[Transgender Warriors]]''.<ref name="What Kind of Times are These"/><ref name="Was Adrienne Rich Anti-Trans"/><ref>{{cite web|last1=Ladin |first1=Joy|title=Diving Into the Wreck: Trans and Anti-Trans Feminism|url=https://eoagh.com/diving-into-the-wreck-trans-and-anti-trans-feminism/|website=eoagh.com|date=August 12, 2017|access-date=March 6, 2021}}</ref>

By the early 1980s, Rich was using canes and wheelchairs due to [[rheumatoid arthritis]]. Diagnosed with the condition at age 22, Rich kept her disability quiet for decades. The cold air in New England motivated Rich and Cliff to settle in California. A 1992 spinal operation required Rich to wear a [[Ilizarov apparatus|metal halo]] screwed into her head.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/12/hilary-holladay-adrienne-rich/616935/ |title=The Many Lives of Adrienne Rich |date=November 14, 2020 |publisher=[[The Atlantic]] |accessdate=March 27, 2022}}</ref>

In June 1984, Rich presented a speech at the International Conference of Women, Feminist Identity, and Society in [[Utrecht]], [[Netherlands]] titled ''Notes Toward a Politics of Location.''<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|title=Blood, Bread, and Poetry: Selected Prose, 1979–1985|url=https://archive.org/details/bloodbreadpoetry00adri|url-access=registration|last=Rich|first=Adrienne|publisher=Norton|year=1986|isbn=0393311627|location=New York|pages=[https://archive.org/details/bloodbreadpoetry00adri/page/210 210]}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |last=Rich |first=Adrienne |date=1984 |title=Notes toward a Politic of Location |url=https://openspaceofdemocracy.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/adrienne-rich-notes-toward-a-politics-of-location.pdf }}</ref> Her keynote speech is a major document on politics of location and the birth of the concept of female "locatedness".  In discussing the locations from which women speak, Rich attempts to reconnect female thought and speech with the female body, with an intent to reclaim the body through verbalizing self-representation.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Littman|first=Linda|year=2003|title="Old Dogs, New Tricks": Intersections of the Personal, the Pedagogical, the Professional|jstor=3650498|journal=The English Journal|volume=93|issue=2|page=66|doi=10.2307/3650498}}</ref> Rich begins the speech by noting that while she speaks the words in Europe, she has searched for them in the [[United States]].<ref name=":0" /> By acknowledging her location in an essay on the progression of the women's movement, she expresses her concern for all women, not just women in Providence. Through widening her audience to women across the world Rich not only influences a larger movement but she invites all women to consider their existence. Through imagining geographical locations on a map as history and as places where women are created, and further focusing on those locations, Rich asks women to examine where they were created. In an attempt to try to find a sense of belonging in the world, Rich asks the audience not to begin with a continent, country, or house, but to start with the geography closest to themselves –which is their body.<ref name=":0" /> Rich, therefore, challenges members of the audience and readers to form their own identity by refusing to be defined by the parameters of government, religion, and home.<ref name=":0" /> The essay hypothesizes the women's movement at the end of the 20th century. In an encouraging call for the women's movement, Rich discusses how the movement for change is an evolution in itself. Through de-masculinizing and de-Westernizing itself, the movement becomes a critical mass of many different voices, languages and overall actions. She pleads for the movement to change in order to experience change. She further insists that women must change it.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=DeShazer|first=Mary K.|year=1996|title="The End of a Century": Feminist Millennial Vision in Adrienne Rich's "Dark Fields of the Republic"|journal=NWSA Journal|volume=8|issue=3|page=46|doi=10.2979/NWS.1996.8.3.36 |doi-broken-date=November 1, 2024 |jstor=4316460}}</ref> In her essay, Rich considers how one's background might influence their identity. She furthers this notion by noting her own exploration of the body, her body, as female, as white, as [[Jews|Jewish]] and as a body in a nation.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Eagleton|first=Mary|year=2000|title=Adrienne Rich, Location And The Body.|journal=Journal of Gender Studies|volume=9|issue=3|pages=299–312|via=Academic Search Premier|doi=10.1080/713678003|s2cid=143486606}}</ref> Rich is careful to define the location in which her writing takes place. Throughout her essay, Rich refers back to the concept of location. She recounts her growth towards understanding how the women's movement grounded in [[Western culture]] and limited to the concerns of white women, then incorporated verbal and written expression of black United States citizens. Such professions have allowed her to experience the meaning of her whiteness as a point of location for which she needed to take responsibility.<ref name=":0" /> In 1986, she published the essay in her prose collection ''Blood, Bread, and Poetry''.<ref name=":0" />

Rich's work with the [[New Jewish Agenda]] led to the founding of ''Bridges: A Journal for Jewish Feminists and Our Friends'' in 1990, a journal for which Rich served as editor.<ref>{{cite book|last=Rich|first=Adrienne|title=Arts of the Possible: Essays and Conversations|year=2001|publisher=W.W. Norton & Company|location=New York|pages=138–144}}</ref> This work explored the relationship between private and public histories, especially in the case of Jewish women's rights.  Her next published piece, ''An Atlas of the Difficult World'' (1991), won both the ''Los Angeles Times'' Book Award in Poetry and the Lenore Marshall/''Nation'' Award as well as the Poet's Prize in 1993 and Commonwealth Award in Literature in 1991.<ref name="Langdell" /><ref name="Poets.org" /> During the 1990s Rich joined advisory boards such as the Boston Woman's Fund, [[National Writers Union]] and Sisterhood in Support of Sisters in South Africa. On the role of the poet, she wrote, "We may feel bitterly how little our poems can do in the face of seemingly out-of-control technological power and seemingly limitless corporate greed, yet it has always been true that poetry can break isolation, show us to ourselves when we are outlawed or made invisible, remind us of beauty where no beauty seems possible, remind us of kinship where all is represented as separation."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/rich/onlineessays.htm |title=Adrienne Rich: Online Essays and Letters |publisher=English.illinois.edu |access-date=March 28, 2012}}</ref> In July 1994, Rich won the [[MacArthur Fellowship]], the "Genius Grant" for her work as a poet and writer.<ref>{{cite web|title=MacArthur: The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation|url=http://www.macfound.org/site/c.lkLXJ8MQKrH/b.959463/k.9D7D/Fellows_Program.htm|work=Fellow Program|access-date=December 12, 2011}}</ref> Also in 1992, Rich became a grandmother to Julia Arden Conrad and Charles Reddington Conrad.<ref name="Langdell" />

{{quote box |align=right |width = 550px |bgcolor=#FFFFF0 |salign=right
 |quote  ={{poemquote|
There's a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill
and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows
near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted
who disappeared into those shadows.

I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don't be fooled
this isn't a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,
our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,
its own ways of making people disappear.}}
 |source = —From "What kinds of times are these?"<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/181516#poem |title=What kinds of times are these? |website=Poetry Foundation|date=August 12, 2021 }}.</ref>
}}

In 1997, Rich declined the [[National Medal of Arts]] in protest against the House of Representatives' vote to end the National Endowment for the Arts as well as policies of the Clinton Administration regarding the arts generally, and literature in particular, stating that "I could not accept such an award from President Clinton or this White House because the very meaning of art, as I understand it, is incompatible with the cynical politics of this administration ... [Art] means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of the power which holds it hostage".<ref Name="Shuman1281">Shuman (2002) p1281</ref><ref>[https://www.nytimes.com/1997/07/11/us/in-a-protest-poet-rejects-arts-medal.html "In a Protest, Poet Rejects Arts Medal"], ''The New York Times'', July 11, 1997. Retrieved February 10, 2012.</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Rich|first=Adrienne|title=Arts of the Possible: Essays and Conversations|year=2001|publisher=W.W. Norton & Company|location=New York|pages=95–105|work=Why I Refused the National Medal for the Arts|editor=Adrienne Rich}}</ref> Her next few volumes were a mix of poetry and essays: ''Midnight Salvage: Poems 1995–1998'' (1999), ''The Art of the Possible: Essays and Conversations'' (2001), and ''Fox: Poems 1998–2000'' (2001).

In the early 2000s, Rich participated in anti-war activities, protesting against the threat of war in Iraq, both through readings of her poetry and other activities. In 2002, she was appointed a chancellor of the newly augmented board of the Academy of American Poets, along with [[Yusef Komunyakaa]], [[Lucille Clifton]], [[Jay Wright (poet)|Jay Wright]] (who declined the honor), [[Louise Glück]], [[Heather McHugh]], [[Rosanna Warren]], [[Charles Wright (poet)|Charles Wright]], [[Robert Creeley]], and [[Michael Palmer (poet)|Michael Palmer]].<ref Name="Langdell"/> She won the 2003 Yale Bollingen Prize for American Poetry and was applauded by the panel of judges for her "honesty at once ferocious, humane, her deep learning, and her continuous poetic exploration and awareness of multiple selves."<ref name="Poets.org"/> In October 2006, Equality Forum honored Rich's work, featuring her as an icon of LGBT history.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.lgbthistorymonth.com/adrienne-rich |title=Adrienne Rich |publisher=LGBTHistoryMonth.com |date=August 20, 2011 |access-date=December 3, 2020}}</ref>

In 2009, despite initially having reservations about the movement, Rich endorsed the call for a cultural and [[academic boycott of Israel]], denouncing "the Occupation's denial of Palestinian humanity, destruction of Palestinian lives and livelihoods, the "settlements", the state's physical and psychological walls against dialogue."<ref>{{cite web|url=https://mronline.org/2009/02/08/why-support-the-u-s-campaign-for-the-academic-and-cultural-boycott-of-israel/ |title=Why Support the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel? |date=February 8, 2009 |publisher=[[Monthly Review]] |accessdate=March 30, 2022}}</ref><ref name=":1">{{Cite journal |last=Cable |first=Umayyah |date=2022-04-03 |title=Compulsory Zionism and Palestinian Existence: A Genealogy |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0377919X.2022.2040324 |journal=Journal of Palestine Studies |language=en |volume=51 |issue=2 |pages=66–71 |doi=10.1080/0377919X.2022.2040324 |s2cid=248281682 |issn=0377-919X}}</ref>

Rich died on March 27, 2012, at the age of 82 in her Santa Cruz, California, home. Her son, Pablo Conrad, reported that her death resulted from long-term [[rheumatoid arthritis]].<ref>{{cite news|url=http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2012/03/adrienne-rich.html|title=Poet Adrienne Rich, 82, has died|work=Los Angeles Times|date=March 28, 2012|access-date=March 28, 2012}}</ref> Her last collection was published the year before her death. Rich was survived by her sons, two grandchildren<ref name="nytobit">{{Cite news|last=Fox|first=Margalit|date=March 28, 2012|title=Adrienne Rich, Influential Feminist Poet, Dies at 82|language=en-US|work=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/29/books/adrienne-rich-feminist-poet-and-author-dies-at-82.html|access-date=October 16, 2021|issn=0362-4331}}</ref> and her partner [[Michelle Cliff]].<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/9174640/Adrienne-Rich.html|title=Adrienne Rich|work=The Daily Telegraph|date=March 29, 2012|access-date=March 29, 2012}}</ref>