From an Atlas of the Difficult World - A poem by Adrienne Rich

I know you are reading this poem late, before leaving your office of the one intense yellow lamp-spot and the darkening window in the lassitude of a building faded to quiet long after rush-hour. I know you are reading this poem standing up in a bookstore far from the ocean on a grey day of early spring, faint flakes driven across the plains' enormous spaces around you. I know you are reading this poem in a room where too much has happened for you to bear where the bedclothes lie in stagnant coils on the bed and the open valise speaks of flight but you cannot leave yet. I know you are reading this poem as the underground train loses momentum and before running up the stairs toward a new kind of love your life has never allowed. I know you are reading this poem by the light of the television screen where soundless images jerk and slide while you wait for the newscast from the intifada. I know you are reading this poem in a waiting-room of eyes met and unmeeting, of identity with strangers. I know you are reading this poem by fluorescent light in the boredom and fatigue of the young who are counted out, count themselves out, at too early an age. I know you are reading this poem through your failing sight, the thick lens enlarging these letters beyond all meaning yet you read on because even the alphabet is precious. I know you are reading this poem as you pace beside the stove warming milk, a crying child on your shoulder, a book in your hand because life is short and you too are thirsty. I know you are reading this poem which is not in your language guessing at some words while others keep you reading and I want to know which words they are. I know you are reading this poem listening for something, torn between bitterness and hope turning back once again to the task you cannot refuse. I know you are reading this poem because there is nothing else left to read there where you have landed, stripped as you are.

Comment 6 of 6, added on May 31st, 2006 at 4:03 PM.

THis poem has meaning beyond the surface meaning. It holds power over the reader, pulling you in like your a child on a playground. Antisipating what you want to play on next. Reading this poem takes you in and guess what... you dont mind it. Its a poem about reading poems...or is it?

Mary from United States

Comment 5 of 6, added on December 17th, 2005 at 11:14 PM.

I haven't felt so loved since my last visit to the health clinic. Really. It's a bit of a story.

This poem made me feel *understood*, but not at all violated.

Margarita from Canada

Comment 4 of 6, added on November 7th, 2005 at 12:18 AM.

I think this piece is so powerful because it can be universalized, anyone can see themselves in her explanation of their need for poetry, but she was actually addressing a much smaller audience than a first reading would imply. There are levels to her audience and levels of meaning to be read in the poem.

The title and the final line imply great struggle, beyond (I think) the mundane struggles of the every day consumer of poetry. Adrienne Rich was an extremely astute lesbian feminist poet and she very well may be speaking to women, or specifically lesbians in this poem. The need for a life-narrative (an alternative to the hetero-norm) that makes sense, and the need for an expression of that marginal and oppressed existence in literature of some kind (specifically poetry) may be what she is communicating in this poem. Not only do humans need poetry, but women need the poetry of other women, and lesbians need the poetry of other lesbians. This intense need for community and community narratives gives deeper meaning to the diverse situations in which we find ourselves connecting with poetry, and Adrienne Rich communicates it through her poem without excluding other audience members from the experience. That's a powerful expression of the connectedness of a community of humans that actually privileges the marginal without excluding the mainstream audience.

Div from United States

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