“You can call on beauty still and it will leap
from all directions.” ~Adrienne Rich
The University of Cincinnati’s Zimmer Auditorium is a dreadful, dreary place: rows and rows of uncomfortable seats, a dark stage, cement walls, cold air blowing from everywhere. I took my general education requirements in that auditorium, biology charts projected on an enormous screen while most of the 500 students slept.
Then Adrienne Rich came to campus. She already seemed ancient—and this was 15 years ago—a tiny, gray-haired woman who walked slowly as she made her way across Zimmer’s stage to the podium. A long-time feminist and lesbian scholar, a long-time poet—and I was already a devotee. When I found Rich’s work, poetry opened up for me, moved in entirely new directions. Here was a woman unafraid on the page, unafraid to write about sexism or sex, unafraid to use form when it suited a poem’s needs and to abandon it when it didn’t, unafraid to tackle huge global issues or a day’s simple moments. Unafraid.
So she came to UC, and even though I was an undergraduate, one of my professors invited me to a small discussion with the graduate students, only 15 of us in a library room sitting across from Adrienne Rich. She looked much frailer than I expected, spoke quietly but with force. And I still have the notes I took as she spoke: poets must examine their location in the world; be clear that every private life is connected to a wider public life; go out into the world in pursuit of poetry instead of looking for it behind closed doors.
And that evening, Zimmer Auditorium: a poetry reading. Almost every single seat was filled—all 500 of them. Rich was introduced, and she began her slow walk across the stage. And the applause began, thundering, echoing off the concrete. Whistles and cheers filled that horrid, dreary place. And we stood. Before she had even spoken, Adrienne Rich received a standing ovation. A poet. A feminist.
Last week, when news of Rich’s death began appearing in my inbox, I spent hours reading various tributes and obituaries, scouring the news. Everything I found seemed distant, too insistent on reminding us that Adrienne Rich mattered. But those of us who adore her work already know how much she mattered.
So I thought instead of that moment in Zimmer Auditorium. How remarkable it is that in a time when American poets daily lament the death of poetry, of readership, here was a poet who filled a 500 seat auditorium, who received a standing ovation before she even read one poem (and another when she was done reading). And I thought of that small session in the library, how she said, “Poetry is a life. You must feel compelled to do it at all costs.” How she lived that truth. How she inspired me to do the same. How she inspired so many of us. How she called on beauty—even in the midst of the most terrible times—and watched it leap from all directions.
Planet of the Blind 