Marginal Notes: Adrienne Rich

On refusing the National Medal for the Arts and writing as an act of resistance

A few years ago I found a copy of Adrienne Rich’s early poetry at a used bookstore in Hyattsville, Maryland called My Dead Aunt’s Books. I bought it without realizing it was signed by Rich, whose work I was teaching at the time in my Reading Women Writing class. She’s best remembered for her essay “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence” (1980…