Adrienne Rich

Poet, essayist, and cultural critic Adrienne Rich is among the most widely admired and thought-provoking writers in the United States. She received the Yale Younger Poets Award in 1951, at the age of twenty-one, and has since authored sixteen volumes of poetry, including Diving into the Wreck (1972), for which she received the National Book Award. Her essays and poems are taught across the country in most English programs and Women's Studies courses. She is the recipient of nearly every major literary award including the 1999 Lannan Foundation Lifetime Achievement award, an Academy of American Poets Fellowship, and the MacArthur "Genius" Grant.

PoemTalk #2, Discussing Adrienne Rich's "Wait", feat. Jessica Lowenthal, Linh Dinh, and Randall Couch

Complete recording (23:33): MP3.

PennSound Podcast #11 Adrienne Rich

Complete recording (23:39): MP3

Reading at San Francisco State, Cloud House Poetry Archives, September 9, 2006

Kelly Writers House Fellows Program, April 18-19, 2005

• Complete video of reading: Streaming Video, Downloadable Video
• Complete video of discussion: Streaming Video, Downloadable Video
• Photos of Rich's visit

Introductions

1. Introduction by Al Filreis (5:58): MP3
2. Introduction by Alicia Oltuski (4:41): MP3
3. Opening Remarks by Adrienne Rich (1:37): MP3

Discussion and Readings

1. Introduction by Al Filreis MP3.
2. Discussion of Wait MP3
3. Trying to talk of the man and American nationalism MP3
4. On then and now in poetry MP3
5. Rich's creative process MP3
6. Teaching Poetry to those who fear it MP3
7. Books that have influenced Rich MP3
8. Happiness as the opposite of guilt MP3
9. On the sacred MP3
10. On June Jordan MP3
11. Rich reads from a poem written for June Jordan MP3
12. Judaism in Rich's poetry MP3
13. Sexual desire in poetry MP3
14. How imagination leads us to surpass ourselves MP3
15. Rich reads from an essay on the survival of poetry MP3
16. Rich reads from the end of Then or Now MP3

"Wait" is also featured on PoemTalk Episode 2

From Midnight Salvage (1999)

1. Introduction to Letters to a Young Poet (0:26): MP3
2. Letters to a Young Poet (4:27): MP3
3. Introduction to The Art of Translation (0:41): MP3
4. The Art of Translation (2:36): MP3

From Dark Fields of the Republic (1995)

1. Introduction to "What Kind of Times Are These?"" (0:29): MP3
2. What Kind of Times Are These? (1:17): MP3
3. Introduction to From Pierced Darkness, New York, December (0:10): MP3
4. From Pierced Darkness, New York, December (3:52): MP3

From Fox

1. Introduction to "Victory" (1:04): MP3
2. Victory (3:45): MP3
3. Introduction to Rauschenberg's Bed (1:23): MP3
4. Rauschenberg's Bed (1:44): MP3

From The School Among the Ruins: Poems 2000-2004

1. Introduction to Centaur's Requiem (0:33): MP3
2. Centaur's Requiem (0:56): MP3
3. Introduction to Equinox (0:06): MP3
4. Equinox (2:09): MP3
5. Introduction to Transparencies (0:16): MP3
6. Transparencies (2:04): MP3
7. Introduction to Alternating Current (0:59): MP3
8. Alternating Current (4:20): MP3
9. Introduction to Wait (0:32): MP3
10. Wait (0:34): MP3

"Wait" is also featured on PoemTalk Episode 2

New Poems

1. Introduction to As Ever (0:34): MP3
2. As Ever (0:32): MP3 [Tribute to Robert Creeley:text of poem]
3. Introduction to Behind the Motel (0:51): MP3
4. Behind the Motel (1:19): MP3
5. Unknown Quanity (0:51): MP3
6. Introduction to Wallpaper (0:33): MP3
7. Wallpaper (2:22): MP3

Praise from Adrienne Rich

• Adrienne Rich comments on her afternoon with the students in the Fellows seminar just before the reading on April 18, 2005: MP3
• Rich praises Al Filreis as host of the Writers House Fellows: MP3
• Rich also commends Filreis for his teaching: MP3

The Voice of the Poet Presents, 2002

1. Storm Warnings (2:20): MP3
2. Snapshots Of A Daughter-in-Law (8:16): MP3
3. Necessities Of Life (2:14): MP3
4. Mourning Picture (2:26): MP3
5. Planetarium (2:26): MP3
6. I Dream I'm The Death of Orpheus (1:11): MP3
7. Trying To Talk With A Man (2:12): MP3
8. Incipience (2:14): MP3
9. Diving Into The Wreck (3:44): MP3
10. Translations (1:27): MP3
11. Power (1:13): MP3
12. From Twenty-One Love Poems (3:18): MP3
13. A Woman Dead In Her Forties (5:48): MP3
14. Integrity (3:13): MP3
15. North American Time (5:21): MP3
16. From Contradictions: Tracking Poems (2:52): MP3
17. What Kind Of Times Are These (7:07): MP3
18. From Piercéd Darkness (4:28): MP3
19. Fox (2:19): MP3

Reading at SUNY-Buffalo, October 18, 2000

1. Introduction by Robert Creeley (1:44): MP3
2. Poet's introductory remarks (2:27): MP3
3. Letters (March, 1969) (5:36): MP3
4. On Edges (1968) (1:50)MP3
5. Divisions of Labor (1988) (1:54): MP3
6. Marghanita (3:33): MP3
7. Victor (5:24): MP3
8. Driving Home From Robin Blaser's Reading (4 short poems) (3:04): MP3
9. Fox (1:33): MP3
10. Terza Rima (11:12): MP3
11. Sleepwalking Next to Death (6:26): MP3

Reading at Lannan Center, Georgetown University, October 25, 1999

Complete recording (1:00:43): MP3

Adrienne Rich and Carol Muske Dukes at the Lannan Foundation, September 29, 1999

• Conversation (35:36): MP3
• Reading (47:56): MP3

Adrienne Rich reads "Prospective Immigrants Please Note", July 28, 1995

Made by Bill Moyers.

An Evening with Adrienne Rich, City Arts & Lectures, San Francisco, November 30, 1993

Complete recording (39:00): MP3

Adrienne Rich Lannan Literary Video Vol. 1, 1992

Directed by Dan Griggs/Media Revolution.

Adrienne Rich Lannan Literary Video Vol. 2, 1992

Directed by Dan Griggs/Media Revolution.

Planetarium: A Retrospective, 1950-1980

1. Stepping Backward (4:55): MP3
2. Letter from the Land of Sinners (2:20) MP3
3. Snapshots of a Daughter-In-Law (8:19): MP3
4. The Roofwalker (1:27): MP3
5. Novella (0:50): MP3
6. Mourning Picture (2:25): MP3
7. Necessities of Life (2:12): MP3
8. Jerusalem (1:32): MP3
9. Ghazals: Homage to Ghalib, July 12, 1968 (1:04): MP3
10. Ghazals: Homage to Ghalib, August 8, 1968 (0:52): MP3
11. Ghazals: Homage to Ghalib, November 1968 (0:50): MP3
12. Planetarium (2:26): MP3
13. The Stelae (0:52): MP3
14. Trying to Talk with a Man (2:07): MP3
15. Diving Into the Wreck (4:00): MP3
16. Song (1:15): MP3
17. For the Dead (0:51): MP3
18. Power (1:14): MP3
19. Hunger (4:59): MP3
20. Woman Dead in Her Forties (5:49): MP3
21. Excerpts from Twenty-One Love Poems (3:18): MP3
22. Integrity (3:12): MP3
23. Turning the Wheel: Burden Baskets (1:26): MP3
24. Turning the Wheel: Apparition (1:25): MP3
25. Turning the Wheel (1:25): MP3

Published in 1986 by Watershed Tapes.

Reading at Cornell University (on tape in the CU Library), 1985

1. Diving Into the Wreck (3:06): MP3 (Incomplete: final section of poem is cut off)
2. Excerpt from 21 Love Poems (3:15): MP3
3. Snapshots of a Daugther-In-Law (8:12): MP3

Tracking the Contradictions, 1981-1985

1. Introduction (3:36): MP3
2. Sources (23:09): MP3
3. Poetry I, II, III (7:24): MP3
4. Emily Carr (2:45): MP3
5. North American Time (6:27): MP3
6. Contradictions-Tracking Poems (Introduction) (0:39): MP3
7. Contradictions-Tracking Poems (10:26): MP3

Women's Experimental Theater Reading, NYC, 1982

1. Introduction by Sandra Segal (3:52): MP3
2. Introduction by Claire Coss (4:55): MP3
3. Adrienne Rich on her book, A Wild Patience (3:36): MP3
4. What is possible (3:02): MP3
5. Integrity (3:55): MP3
6. For memory (2:36): MP3
7. Grandmothers: Part 1 (2:44): MP3
8. Grandmothers: Part 2 (1:47): MP3
9. Grandmothers: Part 3 (2:35): MP3
10. Turning the wheel: location (2:19): MP3
11. Turning the wheel: burden baskets (1:30): MP3
12. Turning the wheel: Hohokam (1:18): MP3
13. Turning the wheel: self hatred (1:44): MP3
14. Turning the wheel: particularity (1:36): MP3
15. Turning the wheel: apparition (1:25): MP3
16. Turning the wheel: Mary Jane Colter, 1904 (2:00): MP3
17. Turning the wheel: conclusion (2:27): MP3

Complete recording (43:10): MP3

Reading at the Coolidge Auditorium, Library of Congress, April 7, 1981

Reading and Interview with Susan Howe, Pacifica, 1979

Complete recording (24:44): MP3

From A Sign / I Was Not Alone, Out & Out Books, 1977

LP also featured readings by Honor Moore, Audre Lorde, and Joan Larkin; Rich reads "The Mirror in Which Two Are Seen As One," "Power," and "Phantasia for Elvira Shatayev". More info here.

Complete recording (9:01): MP3

Liner notes from recording session:
"One afternoon in November, 1977, the four of us came together in an old house in Brooklyn to record our reading, with each other and some loving friends as our hearers. We crowded into a small room to read and listen. The tenderness, respect, and care that we felt among ourselves seemed more important than the occasional thumps in the background that would have been eliminated in the technically better, more sterile environment of a recording studio. The energy of the occasion was the same kind we had been experiencing at reads in the women’s community and wanted to share more widely—hence the title A Sign/I Was Not Alone (taken from Audre Lorde’s poem “Between Ourselves.”)"

Reading, UCSD, 1975

• Complete Recording, (48:02)MP3
• Recording courtesy of Michael Davison

Reading at First Unitarian Church, San Francisco, April 25, 1974

Complete recording (40:45): MP3

1. Introduction (3:18): MP3
2. Burning Oneself In (1:28): MP3
3. On violence (2:58): MP3
4. Didactic Poem (1:38): MP3
5. In the Evening (0:55): MP3
6. I Dream I'm the Death of Orpheus (1:28): MP3
7. Unwritten Novel (2:43): MP3
8. The Fourth Month of the Landscape Architect (2:30): MP3
9. Waking in the Dark (4:26): MP3

• Side A complete recording (21:34): MP3

1. Incipience (2:10): MP3
2. The Stranger (1:33): MP3
3. Merced (3:13): MP3
4. A Primary Ground (2:33): MP3
5. Translations (1:55): MP3
6. The Phenomenology of Anger (7:11): MP3
7. Diving Into the Wreck (4:04): MP3

• Side B complete recording (22:59): MP3

Reading from "Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law" and "Necessities of Life", WBAI Radio, New York City, April 30, 1972

Complete recording (19:02): MP3

Reading from Woodberry Poetry Room, 1963

• Introduction (I. A. Richards) (8:32): MP3
• Opening Remarks (1:23): MP3
• Double Monologue (read twice) (5:28): MP3
• The Absent-Minded are Always to Blame (2:03): MP3
• A Woman Mourned by Daughters (2:22): MP3
• Peeling Onions (1:08): MP3
• Ghost of a Chance (read twice) (2:06): MP3
• Prospective Immigrants Please Note (1:26): MP3
• The Roofwalker (2:53): MP3
• Thirty-Three (2:59): MP3
• [Introduction to "in the Woods"] (1:13): MP3
• In the Woods (2:56): MP3
• The Trees (2:38): MP3
• Some Degrees of Fever (3:17): MP3
• Look at the Poles and the Sands of Africa (2:32): MP3
• At Work (1:58): MP3
• Snow (1:51): MP3
• Fire Hazard (1:36): MP3
• For Kin (4:12): MP3
• Utica, New York (2:49): MP3

Reading from Woodberry Poetry Room, 1951

• Storm Warnings (1:57): MP3
• Aunt Jennifer's Tigers (0:53): MP3
• The Ultimate Act (1:00): MP3
• What Ghosts Can Say (1:49): MP3
• A View of the Terrace (1:03): MP3
• By No Means Native (2:43): MP3
• A Clock in the Square (0:47): MP3
• Why Else But to Forestall this Hour (1:23): MP3
• Mathilde in Normandy (2:01): MP3
• At a Bach Concert (1:01): MP3
• Five O'Clock Beacon Hill (1:29): MP3
• The Rain of Blood (1:22): MP3
• For the Felling of an Elm in the Harvard Yard (2:40): MP3
• Boundary (0:46): MP3
• The Uncle Speaks in the Drawing Room (1:27): MP3
• For the Conjunction of Two Planets (1:30): MP3
• The Orators (1:47): MP3
• A Song for this Season (1:20): MP3
• Colophon (1:46): MP3

Also of Interest:

A 1974 Reading (38:38): MP3 & RealAudio

Readings and Discussions with Audre Lorde: for internal use only

Adrienne Rich on PennSound Daily

• November 26, 2008: "New PennSound Podcasts Featuring Sieburth, Rich, Wershler-Henry"
• January 8, 2007: "PoemTalk #2: Adrienne Rich's 'Wait'"
• August 19, 2020: "Adrienne Rich: Three New Recordings"

These sound recordings are being made available for noncommercial and educational use only. All rights to this recorded material belong to the author. © 2003–2008 Adrienne Rich. Used with permission of Adrienne Rich. Distributed by PennSound.