Brooklyn Public Library, Prospect Heights
Wednesday came with a difficult decision. Stay home and watch Lost or trek to the Brooklyn Public Library to see Adrienne Rich. The cultured angel on my right shoulder narrowly beat out the TV devil on my left.
If you’re not familiar with Rich, I highly recommend you check out her bio. Her career has had a remarkable trajectory, from a rather conservative young 1950s poet to a vocal feminist and political activist. She turned down the National Medal of Arts in 1997, saying “I could not accept such an award from President Clinton or this White House because the very meaning of art, as I understand it, is incompatible with the cynical politics of this administration…. [Art] means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of the power which holds it hostage.”
Hey, poetry needs its divas too. And at 80, Rich is as feisty as you might expect. After the reading, when the moderator asked if she would take questions, Rich replied, “I never take questions, ever.” But her reading was heartfelt and graceful, including two recent, unpublished poems. Her poetry seems to be getting richer with age, if anything.
I bought a copy of The Fact of a Doorframe, a new edition with selected poems from 1950-2001, and got it signed. Her latest book sold quickly: A Human Eye: Essays on Art and Society.
Arch of Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn
The Brooklyn Library itself is worth a trip. Rich told the audience that she learned to keep a kosher kitchen as a young wife in this neighborhood, pushed her first child in a stroller down these streets, and that her husband fell in love with reading in the children’s room of the library. (Indeed, one of her poems is entitled “Plaza Street and Flatbush,” the library’s address.)
While nothing compares to Manhattan’s central library, Brooklyn’s towers impressively, inscribed with beautiful quotations and Egyptian hieroglyphs. Nearby, the Brooklyn Arch of Grand Army Plaza is illuminated in violet light. It reminds me a bit of the Arc de Triomphe.
Adrienne Rich signs books in Brooklyn May 6, 2009.
All this, and I returned to the UWS in time for Lost.
