Adrienne Rich’s poem “Dedications” reminds me a lot of Walt Whitman’s poems. Rich encompasses other human experiences other than her own just as Whitman did often. She writes about so many moments and so many situations that she can’t possibly have lived through them all herself. Often, Whitman is frowned upon for writing in the name of people he did not know, or experiences he did not experience. However, what Rich does differently than Whitman, is she connects everyone she writes about with her own poetry, therefore, connecting herself with these people as well. Whereas Whitman would write about human experience without the authority to do so, Rich does so in a way that is interconnected and intertwined with herself and her poetry.
She begins the poem by writing, “I know you are reading this poem/ late, before leaving your office/ of the one intense yellow lamp-spot and the darkening window/ in the lassitude of a building faded to quiet” (1-4). Not only is she directly speaking to the reader, addressing us as “you,” she is also creating an entire scene or experience that one of her readers could really relate to. Rich was a poet in the mid-90s, where many people were being corporate work and where many women were still uninvited on the journey. Even though this specific experience could have excluded women at the time, Rich still makes it a point to directly attest to women based on their experiences at the time of this poem.
Rich writes, “I know you are reading this poem as you pace beside the stove/ warming milk, a crying child on your shoulder, a book in your/ hand” (29-31). Here, based on what was expected of women at the time, Rich is speaking directly to them. Rich directly speaks to many groups of people throughout her poem, while also intertwining more open interpretations so everyone can feel spoken to. She often takes political stances in her poetry, attesting to different people groups. For instance, she writes, “I know you reading this poem by the light/ of the television screen where soundless images jerk and slide/ while you wait for the newscast from the Intifada.” The Intifada was the Palestinian uprising against the Israeli in 1987. Rich comments on important events in her poems, but does so in a way that is under that radar.
Whitman did much of this in his writing as well. He produced many pieces commenting on the Civil War, but did so in a way that was not overwhelming to readers. Both of these writers work to connect with their readers through their work. They often comment about other human experiences even though they don’t experience a lot of them themselves. I always find it interesting to read other poets work in comparison to Whitman. Whitman’s influence, whether welcomed or frowned upon, can be seen in many writers and poets that came after him. He made it normal to write about whatever was on your mind – whether society welcomed it or not. Rich did the same thing – she wrote about what she believed and felt and dismissed what society might think. I think these aspects in a poet are what make them successful and influential.
I, too, am constantly finding similarities between on poem and another work of art, or one television show with something I am reading for class. It;s kind of like the phenomena where you hear a words for the first time and then you don’t top hearing it on tv or in you day-to-day. This comparison between Whitman’s sentiments and “Dedications” by Adrienne Rich reminds me of this, and it happens to me too. For example, after reading “I sing the Body Electric,” which deals with the body as a part of the soul, I was also reading Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which does a great deal of convincing me that the body is, in fact, separated from the soul because the soul abides change while the body falls victim to it. What happens when we compare and contrast and study two separate works side-by-side is that we come to understand certain concepts better, and I think that’s what happened for you in this close reading.
Great conversation here. It is fascinating indeed to take a single work or poet and use it as a sort of baseline from which to approach other works. It can illuminate what is happening in both the the main author and the works surrounding it.
Rich’s poem takes core Whitmanian themes–the union of Whitman’s own poem and the physical and imaginative presence of another person, and the direct address–and gives it a fine focus. She speaks and includes not all here, not some generalized stranger, but so many specific individuals in various states of stress and suffering. Thus, she lends this Whitmanian sensibility a deeper sympathy and care than Whitman, at times, can must. Beautiful!