Adrienne Rich’s Twenty-One Love Poems is not your typical love poem, as the experience of pain, hardship, and loneliness between the two female lovers were mainly shown. Specifically in poem 14, Rich reveals the inability of the lesbian couple to show more of an intimate affection compared to the honeymoon couples. The honeymoon couples were “huddled in each other’s laps and arms”, while the speaker of the lesbian couple had “I put my hand on your thigh / to comfort both of us, your hand came over mine, / we stayed that way”. I believe the difference between the two different display of actions, and level of affection, shows the hardship of the lesbian couple; as their description of vomiting was not “as if all suffering were physical” but points to the emotional pain from the speaker’s inability to display the same level of intimacy of the honeymoon couple.
Considering the opposition of women in traditional discourse, and especially lesbian women, I believe Adrienne Rich not only wanted to highlight the troubles experienced by lesbian couples, but wanted to bring reform. In Poem 6, Rich shows her thoughts of reform as the speaker begins to describe her lover’s hands, “Your small hands, precisely equal to my own”. Then afterwards says that, “in these hands / I could trust the world, or in many hands like these”. With these lines, Rich believed in women “handling power-tools or steering wheels”, hinting at the ability that women can hold positions of power, instead of men.
The idea of reform reoccurs in poem 18 and poem 21, when the speaker identified the moon, as “yet more than stone: / a woman”. I came to the conclusion that the “dawn / pushing toward daybreak. Something: a cleft of light?” represented the unequal dominance of man over woman, and the division of light was man’s separation of women (in status and unorthodox love). And when the mood of the “cleft of light” suddenly shifts positively at the end, I believe Rich alluded the separation of women to be able to strengthen the idea of reform by coming together as “a figure of that light”.
I like the fact that you mentioned the quote used in Poem 6 in order to highlight the fact that Adrienne Rich viewed women as being just as capable as men when it comes to certain jobs and roles. A quote from the poem that I found to be interesting as well is: “…such hands could turn the unborn child right ways in the birth canal or pilot the exploratory rescue ship through icebergs, or piece together the fine, needle-like shreds of a great krater cup.” Adrienne Rich was a feminist and lesbian and this common theme of “lesbian existence” is seen throughout the twenty one poems. In addition, these twenty one poems were published in 1976, a year in which feminism and the women’s liberation movement was spreading across the United States.
Im glad you brought up poem 6. I also took a close look at it and found it very interesting how she brought up the power of women and how they are as well capable of “handling power-tools or steering wheels.” This quote speaks directly to the person reading, specially telling women that their hands are capable of doing the exact same things that men can do. I also found it very interesting how in all the Poems the lover is another woman which is a big thing in the 1970’s, showing how a woman can pleasure another woman and be able to support each other, something that they believed only men can do. Women can give each other the same support, comfort and pleasure a man can give a woman.
As for the quote
“such hands might carry out an unavoidable violence
with such restraint, with such a grasp
of the range and limits of violence
that violence ever after would be obsolete.”
What do you believe she mean by this? Was she trying to rile women up to make a change for equality without any limits, to not be scared of the unavoidable violence that might come with this change?
I like how you compare the lesbian and honeymoon couple’s different reactions in poem 14. I really can feel the hardship of the love when I read it. But the speaker is not overthrown by the pain. In poem VIII, she says “deliberate suicide wasn’t my metier”, she wants to “go on from here with you/fighting the temptation to make a career of pain”. She masters the pain, and she fights against ignorance and silence. In poem IX, she says even “the silt and pebbles of the bottom deserve their glint recognition”. I think she says that women or their love need be noticed. I read serveral times about
Two women together is a work
nothing in civilization has made simple,
two people together is a work
heroic in its ordinariness….
I am sure exactly meaning of this part, but I think it’s not only taking about the hardship of women couple. I am wondering the meaning of the “civilization” in this poem.