Title

READ // The Dream of a Common Language : Poems 1974-1977

Authors

Kellye Testy

Recommended Title

The Dream of a Common Language : Poems, 1974-77
By Adrienne Rich
New York, NY : Norton, c1993
PS3535.I233D7 1993

Comments

From Former Dean Kellye Testy:

I also chose a book of poetry by Adrienne Rich, as I am a huge fan of poetry and she is one of my favorite poets. Poetry demonstrates the power of language, and so much of law works through language. Rich’s poem, ‘Power,’ is a favorite of mine. In her musings on the work of Marie Curie, Rich reminds us that our wounds often come from the same source as our power. I’ve always admired Rich for the beauty of her language, for her honest self-reflection, and for combining all of that with a probing social consciousness.

From the Publisher:
"Rich's poems do not demand the willing suspension of disbelief. They demand belief, and it is a measure of her success as a poet that most of the time they get it. . . . The affirmation and the occasional moments of pure joy in these poems are quiet but fully earned."—Margaret Atwood, New York Times Book Review

About the Author:
One of our country’s most distinguished poets, Adrienne Rich was born in Baltimore in 1929. Over the last forty years she has published more than sixteen volumes of poetry and four books of nonfiction prose. Rich’s work has achieved international recognition and has been translated into German, Spanish, Swedish, Dutch, Hebrew, Greek, Italian, and Japanese. She has received numerous awards, fellowships, and prizes, including the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Lenore Marshall/Nation Prize for Poetry, the Fund for Human Dignity Award of the National Gay Task Force, the Lambda Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Poetry, the National Book Award, the Poet’s Prize, the MacArthur Fellowship, and, most recently, the Dorothea Tanning Prize of the Academy of American Poets and the Lannan Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award (2000). Since 1984 she has lived in California.