Shifting Perspectives and Evolving Selves in Adrienne Rich

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to show Adrienne Rich's quest for the integration of the parts of her self as the result of her shift in perspectives on the art of writing and response to the domestic issues at that time. She insists that poetry has a higher function and that it should be of use in the actual lives of the people. It shows her attempt to unify the multiple levels of experience: personal and political; academic and aesthetic; emotional and intellectual. Rich's shift in perspectives reconnects the past with her present in order to strengthen her own present self and her engagement in the world.