Adrienne Rich and Muriel Rukeyser: The Power of Poetry to Create Change

Poets such as Adrienne Rich and Muriel Rukeyser wrote with the firm belief that poetry had the power to create change, both in individual people and within society as a whole. While they wrote for different political reasons (Adrienne Rich was more concerned with women's rights, while Rukeyser essentially tackled the entire political spectrum), they shared a common attitude in changing the world with the art of poetry. Likewise, they shared similar motives for their belief that poetry could change the world; they argued that the root of the problems they witnessed and experienced during their time were due to a fundamental lack of knowledge and understanding. If they could instill that missing knowledge and understanding in their readers, then it would indeed make substantial progress towards the much-needed change in the world.

Adrienne Rich primarily focused her energy on establishing an understanding of the female identity in the hopes of inspiring women to take a legitimate and determined position in the world. Rather than protesting the patriarchy, she believed that it was women who must teach themselves and each other instead of submitting to the expectations placed on them by traditional culture and society. To Rich, poetry is a tool that we can utilize to help us see history in a new position, which gives us the awareness and understanding that is necessary to break free from the universally imbedded structure of human society; the role of women in relation to men. Rich believed that It was important to go back and revise past events in order to establish a better present and future. In her poem, “Diving into the Wreck”, Rich dismisses the historical cliché of a male protagonist; the speaker in her poem is a woman, and she is the heroine to the story. The quest is a criticism of old myths, and the treasure is knowledge. Rich starts off the poem with a “book of myths”. It is the most important and mysterious symbol in the poem. I believe that this mythical aspect symbolizes the patriarchal hold in society that the poet is striving to fight against; the notion that men will always have a power over women and their freedom; myths that split male and female into two opposing groups, that continues the battle between the sexes.

At the same time, it also represents the journey that the woman is embarking on in order to discover herself, free from any restrictions. This is a journey of self-exploration that she must go take on her own, contrary to the belief that women cannot do anything without the presence of a man. Before even starting her journey, the speaker must be aware of the history into which she is diving: “First having read the book of myths”. This is the basis for the rest of the poem as she tries to make sense of present-day knowledge and myth, breaking them down to find the truths of both. Rich includes several other symbols and imagery to portray to the reader the new discoveries that the speaker makes along her journey. “And checked the edge of the knife-blade, / I put on / the body armor of black rubber”. The speaker is examining what she is wearing; though she has armor and a weapon, it is much different from the chainmail and sword in this type of narrative.

By playing with the identity of these traditional items, she is trying to understand how she can relate to that part of history and decide if it is relevant to her. The speaker says, “and loaded the camera, ” and here the camera is a tool that captures her findings along the journey, as a way of preserving them and including as part of our history. “There is a ladder. /The ladder is always there / hanging innocently / close to the side of the schooner. / We know what it is for, / we who have used it. ” The ladder is a crucial part of the poem, as Rich dedicates a big portion of the poem to its significance. We are forced to confront the image of the ladder; a ladder is used to change our position, to move up or down. In this case, moving down the ladder will take the speaker into another world. In lines 14-15, the ladder becomes a character in the poem. When the speaker describes the ladder as “hanging innocently”, Rich uses personification to bring the object to life. The ladder can also represent a possible obstacle in the speaker’s journey. Rich uses a simile, comparing the speaker to an insect. This journey is difficult, and she is clumsy, so it will take a lot for her complete her journey. “I came to explore the wreck. / The words are purposes. / The words are maps”.

Lastly, the wreck symbolizes the image of the life of a woman, her successes and failure. It is the history of all women oppressed under a patriarchal culture; it is the source of myths of the gender norms which shape our lives and roles today. Although the journey is meant to be for the speaker alone, it also represents others that have taken the same path. The journey is all about discovery and healing, and that is what Rich is trying to achieve with her poem.

While Adrienne Rich revised historical constructions to create change, Muriel Rukeyser was primarily interested in producing political change through personal exposure of the issues at hand, acting more of as a poetic reporter or journalist. Rukeyser dealt with the lack of humanity and the loss of human innocence during the time of war. It is obvious that she was deeply influenced by them. Her poem, “Poem (I Lived in the First Century of World Wars) describes a struggle for the awareness and purpose during a time when both seem to be completely useless. The first line, “I lived in the first century of world wars” sets the scene of the poem in a powerful way. We can presume that it would be the last, but the speaker corrects us by saying that it was only “the first. ” Set in the time where first WWI occurred, then WWII and now the Vietnam War, such an attitude towards the situation is justified. It is a statement in complete hopelessness. In the next few lines of the poem the speaker expands on this spirit of hopelessness with the use of vague language: “I would call my friends on other devices; / They would be more or less mad for similar reasons”. She creates a picture for us to witness the uselessness of the situation by diminishing high-level machinery to “other devices” and intense complicated emotions, such as despair or even insanity, to “more or less sad. ” Being specific doesn’t matter anymore, because nothing really matters at all. The speaker lives in a world that is traumatized from pain to the point of numbness, a world where people have learned to tune out the daily disasters and horrors that are occurring around them. The speaker seems to be sucked into a permanent state of apathy. Despite the bleakness of the situation, Rukeyser’s speaker still hopes for the smallest spark of motivation. She is struggling to fight against the apathy that is taking over her: “Slowly I would get to pen and paper / Make my poems for others unseen and unborn”. This small act of writing seems futile, but it eventually puts some inspiration into her. She becomes more passionate about it as she is “…reminded of those men and women / Brave, setting up signals across vast distances / Considering a nameless way of living, of almost unimagined values”.

In the middle of the despair and negativity, she has come across a sense of purpose; she envisions herself connecting with poets all around the world as they all struggle to establish a revolution of culture, “Considering a nameless way of living”. It is something that is impossible for her put into words, something that is now worth fighting for, for the sake of humanity and hope. Although it seems as the speaker’s initial goal is to completely transform society, she wants to clarify to her readers that it is not so simple. She and other poets will try “To construct peace, to make love, to reconcile / Waking with sleeping, ourselves with each other / Ourselves with each other, ourselves with ourselves”. The ultimate goal is to face reality and be aware of the situation around everyone, and rather than giving up, one needs to find purpose amidst the chaos and work together to create a world where harmony and peace exists. However, none of this can ever be achieved if people never “wake up” from the effects of living in a numbed world. The speaker concludes her thoughts with “…lived in the first century of these wars”. She understands that her struggle is futile; wars will go on, the struggle to do anything about it will continue, and her personal battle of fighting against it will also be pointless. Nonetheless, fighting against the hopelessness for even a single moment every day is one step closer to a better world.

Rich’s and Rukeyser’s poems signify the issues that people all around the world have been fighting against for several years up until present day. Though they targeted different audiences and used different approaches, they both wrote with the belief that their poetry could make change. As a feminist, Rich returned to history and past events with the goal of creating an identity for the modern woman, while Rukeyser relied on personal experiences to wake others from ignorance and denial in order to make reform. In both of these cases, they were convinced that it was a lack of knowledge and understanding which was responsible for the issues they saw in their culture. By achieving this goal, there would be an establishment of a reformed culture, exactly what both Rich and Rukeyser would want.