Adrienne Rich Biography

Adrienne Rich was an American poet, essayist and feminist. She was born to Jewish-Protestant parents. Her father encouraged her to read and write from a very young age and home tutored her. She spent a great deal of her time in her father’s library which was stocked with works of great writers. She worked hard to fulfil her father’s wishes, and by the time she was twenty-two, she come out with her first collection of poems, ‘A Change of World’. She married Alfred Conrad, an Economics Professor and had three sons. Their marriage became severely strained because of her being a lesbian. They separated and Conrad committed suicide. A large portion of her work portrayed her thoughts about lesbianism and feminist activism. Her poems and essays were well received, and she won a series of awards and recognitions from various quarters. Her collections of poems include ‘The Diamond Cutters’, ‘Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law’, ‘Twenty-One Love Poems’, ‘A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far’, and ‘The Fact of a Doorframe’. Her critically acclaimed essays include: ‘The Art of the Possible: Essays and Conversations’ and ‘Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence’.