Your Native Land, Your Life, by Adrienne Rich

A major American poet faces her own native land, her own life, and the result is a volume of compelling, transforming poems. The book includes two extraordinary longer works: the self-exploratory "Sources" and"Contradictions-Tracking Poems," an ongoing index of an American woman's life.

The poet writes, "In these poems I have been trying to speak from, and of, and to, my country. To speak a different claim from those staked by the patriots of the sword; to speak of the land itself, the cities, and of the imaginations that have dwelt here, at risk, unfree, assaulted erased. I believe more than ever that the search for justice and compassion is the great wellspring for poetry in our time, throughout the world, though the theme of despair has been canonized in this century. I draw strength from the traditions of all those who, with every reason t0 despair, have refused to do so."

Rich has written eleven volumes of poetry and th prose works On Lies, Secrets, and Silence and Of Woma Born. Since 1984 she has lived in California.

condition: very good