Necessities of Life

Necessities of Life by Adrienne Rich. 1966 Knopf, first paperback printing, 79 pages. According to Rich's obituary in the New York Times: "Adrienne Rich, a poet of towering reputation and towering rage, whose work — distinguished by an unswerving progressive vision and a dazzling, empathic ferocity — brought the oppression of women and lesbians to the forefront of poetic discourse and kept it there for nearly a half-century...While some critics called her poetry polemical, she remained celebrated for the unflagging intensity of her vision, and for the constant formal reinvention that kept her verse — often jagged and colloquial, sometimes purposefully shocking, always controlled in tone, diction and pacing — sounding like that of few other poets." Necessities was her fourth book.

Condition: VG

"You are falling asleep and I sit looking at you

old tree of life

old man whose death I wanted

I can't stir you up now."