Sad Day

[kelly_chambliss]

I know she was 82 and had a good, long, meaningful life, but I'm still very depressed about the death of Adrienne Rich. She was such a formative influence on my understanding of gender and sexuality. I read her poems and her essay on "compulsory heterosexuality" when I was in college, and they transformed the world for me.

Thank you, Adrienne Rich.



(photo credit Robert Giard)

Comments

[sophia_gratia]

Oh, my dear. I know. I had planned to re-read 'Compulsory Heterosexuality' today, for my current chapter, before I learned of her death this morning. And this morning, learning the news in the form of my facebook feed announcing to me that '8 of your friends posted about Adrienne Rich,' my sorrow, my reminiscing over fifteen years of living with her work, this grief, to my surprise, gave me a weird kind of courage. Though I never met her, she certainly counts among my 'survival relationships'. This is a kind of mourning that – at least for me – is emerging into thought and renewed commitment to the history of the lesbian continuum. That in itself, I think, is in Rich's spirit. Reading and thinking today, for me, takes the form of honoring her.

Here's to transforming the world, and depressed solidarity.

In sisterhood,
soph xx

[kelly_chambliss]

Reading and thinking today, for me, takes the form of honoring her

This is lovely -- and just the way the tributes should go, I think. It's through her work, after all, that her immortality lies. I think she'd like the idea that something about her death gave someone courage. (I know that's how I'll feel, when I'm dead /g/).