"A Change of World, Episode 2: Books that Broke Down Barriers"

3 May 2017:

"We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear." --Adrienne Rich, "Diving into the Wreck"

As I took a long walk this morning, I really enjoyed listening to this episode of Poetry Off the Shelf, which features great discussions of Plath, Sexton, Rukeyser, Lorde, and Rich. Something about my mind this morning latched especially onto Rich and this amazing poem. I feel like I get it more and more every time I read it, though "getting it" is ultimately sort of not the point. I guess what I mean is that you are never really going to understand the wreck itself, but that process of diving in and really looking around--that I get more and more.

Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich has died at 82. Just last night, at the Sigma Tau Delta poetry reading, my colleague shared some of Rich's work, including "The Roofwalker." She talked about how Rich's voice feminist voice remains just as relevant today as it was in 1961.

The Roofwalker
FOR DENISE LEVERTOV.
By Adrienne Rich

Over the half-finished houses
night comes. The builders
stand on the roof. It is
quiet after the hammers,
the pulleys hang slack.
Giants, the roofwalkers,
on a listing deck, the wave
of darkness about to break
on their heads. The sky
is a torn sail where figures
pass magnified, shadows
on a burning deck.

I feel like them up there:
exposed, larger than life,
and due to break my neck.

Was it worth while to lay—
with infinite exertion—
a roof I can’t live under?
—All those blueprints,
closings of gaps
measurings, calculations?
A life I didn’t choose
chose me: even
my tools are the wrong ones
for what I have to do.
I’m naked, ignorant,
a naked man fleeing
across the roofs
who could with a shade of difference
be sitting in the lamplight
against the cream wallpaper
reading—not with indifference—
about a naked man
fleeing across the roofs.