This was the first collection I’ve ever read of Adrienne Rich. I’ve known of her for years and I’ve read some of her poems before in different literature classes, but never have I sat and absorbed this much of her poetry at once. It’s rare for me to find a book – poetry or otherwise – that makes me want to devour it in one sitting, but this book is certainly one of them.

This collection unabashedly discusses same-sex love between women, even more so as the collection advances, while also navigating themes of the natural world, compassion, violence, and politics. It’s astonishing to me how a writer can so effortlessly weave these subjects together, creating some of the most beautiful poems I have ever read. But it’s not just the writing itself that’s beautiful, it’s the poems and their many facets brought together to make a complete jewel. The emotions fused into each line generates a kind of echoing cry that reaches into the next poem and the one after it. The collection literally echoes with different sections of itself, and not because the writing is repeated, but because the speaker’s voice is so prominent throughout the book.

I have a habit of taking notes when I read, primarily in writing down quotes from what I’m reading that feel important or stand out to me in some way. Sometimes it’s one line in a poem, sometimes it’s a whole stanza, and sometimes it’s a whole poem. Regardless, I keep a hand-written record of what hits me so that I can look back and remind myself of what I heard and received from a specific book of poetry. I see it as a way of documenting my reactions to what I’m reading so that I can more thoroughly absorb the poetry and, hopefully, keep growing my craft and my use of language. I don’t think there was a single poem in this book that I didn’t underline at least one thing. And that rarely happens.

I was also immediately enthralled with her poem “Cartographies of Silence” because my current creative thesis for my M.F.A. is called Cartography of Grief, and the symbiosis there is just too amazing for words. Some quotes from that poem that particularly struck me: “A conversation begins / with a lie” (pg 16); “A poem can begin / with a lie. And be torn up” (pg 16); “The loneliness of the liar / living in the formal network of the lie / twisting the dials to drown the terror / beneath the unsaid word” (pg 17); “Silence can be a plan / rigorously executed…Do not confuse it / with any kind of absence” (pg 17); “Let me have this dust, / these pale clouds dourly lingering, these words / moving with ferocious accuracy” (pg 19). There are many other quotes from this poem alone, as well as from the rest of the book, but these particular sections hit me like truths I’ve read before but long forgotten.

And I think that’s what’s so particularly moving about this book: it feels familiar, like something seeded in my past that has only now begun to grow and sprout leaves and blossoms. There’s a parable in the Bible where, I believe it’s Jesus, who talks about how one person plants the seed and someone else waters it and someone else watches it bear fruit; this is exactly how this collection reads. It feels like it’s the bearing of fruit from a seed planted long ago, a seed forgotten but not abandoned. And I think that’s exactly the point of this collection: it’s literally a manifestation of “the dream of a common language” while also examining what such a common language could be. It’s truly a stunning piece of work that has filled me with a desire to read everything Rich ever wrote.

It’s deeply feminist, unapologetically queer, and radical in the ways it examines human interpersonal relationships. It’s both implicitly and explicitly political, exploring issues of gender, sexuality, bodily autonomy, and even the subtle ways that grief can be exploited for political gain. There’s too much beauty in this book for me to articulate all of it, but at each turn of the page I found myself ever captivated and drawn in. I quite literally found pieces of myself among these pages, and for that I am more grateful than I can express. I cannot recommend this book enough.