Reconstructing the Human World: The Poetic Vision of Adrienne Rich

Abstract

Rich's poetry does not merely extend to the culture to challenge the given assumptions to women, but also offers new visions. Rich questions more than the social inequalities experienced by women. She argues women should not waste their energies, lives, time and intellects for the sake of men but for whole-woman-community and human beings. Consciousness and self-knowledge of female experiences and language and energies for women is more than a search for identity. A woman's freedom depends on the freedom of the whole women community. So Rich speaks for the communal freedom. She affirms that without the task of reconstruction of the world, only the task of attacking gender stereotypes can not liberate women. Women should stay together to create a new mythology to correct patriarchal distortion and to change the cultural lens. She insists on the identification with all women to set the world on fire and frame plans forits reconstruction. She calls out for sisterhood, a new politics, a new language, to achieve women's liberation and true humanity.