Adrienne Rich: Unclenching the Imagination

Joseph Conrad once remarked, “To snatch in a moment of courage from the remorseless rush of time, a passing phase of life, is only the beginning of the task.” Arguably, he failed to complete the task. The racism evident in his famous novella Heart of Darkness, notwithstanding its critique of imperialism, is an illustration of the point.

But he was making a useful argument. All writers reflect the times they live in. Great writers can help us navigate those times. They can pose difficult questions, even if they don’t have all the answers. Poetry, in particular, can document our society, remind us what is important and help us to imagine different futures. It can shape a common human identity.

The power of poetry – its ability to connect us with ourselves as well as each other, its reflection of memory, its paradoxical love of life – is clearly seen in the work of Adrienne Rich.

I’m thinking particularly of her remarkable short poem, What Kind of Times Are These. Written in 1991, it seems peculiarly relevant to our current times. The poem raises questions about faded dreams of democracy, the commodification of life and the necessity of confronting abuses of power.

It picks up on a line in the poem To Those Born Later by Bertolt Brecht. Written in 1938, Brecht was referring to the dark times people faced as fascism threatened Europe: “What kind of times are these/When it’s almost a crime to talk about trees/Because it means keeping still about so many evil deeds?”

What Kind of Times Are These begins and ends with a reference to the nature that sustains us. It points to the lost hopes of the Revolutionary War, which have broken off into the shadows, taking the persecuted with them, who have “disappeared in those shadows.”

But while talking about the past, it’s also clearly about the present and a “country moving closer to its own truth and dread.”

It contains some evocative imagery about, “ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise.” Which is now threatened by forces who want to, “buy it, sell it, make it disappear.”

The final stanza asks the question, “why do I tell you anything?” Rich’s answer revolves around the importance of listening and the importance of talking “about trees.”

We need to talk about moral and political decay. We also need to talk about things which relate to people’s lived experience.

Brecht’s acute sense of foreboding is reflected in Adrienne Rich’s own foreboding about what the future held for the United States.

Rich, a radical feminist and politically engaged artist, believed, “in art’s social presence – as breaker of official silences, as voice for those whose voices are disregarded, and as a human birthright.” She argued for “the power of art to break despair.” But she had also witnessed the brutal impact of racial and economic injustice.

In poems like Diving into the Wreck, she confronted what was broken in our society:

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.

Rich understood the emancipatory power of poetry, its expression of human solidarity, and its ability to both disturb us and embolden us.

Her poem is a call to action we would be wise to heed. Her passionate scepticism gives us cause to examine the times we live in and is a reminder that silence is not an option.   

What Kind of Times Are These

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.

I won't tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods

meeting the unmarked strip of light—

ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:

I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.

And I won't tell you where it is, so why do I tell you

anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these

to have you listen at all, it's necessary

to talk about trees.

Listen to Adrienne Rich read her poem here: