Vesuvius at Home: The Power of Emily Dickinson

Adrienne Rich (1929-2012) was an American poet, essayist, and activist. Rich was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and was home-schooled until the age of 10 by her father, who sparked her passion for poetry. She attended Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she studied poetry and writing. During her senior year, her first book of poems, A Change of World, was published and subsequently awarded the Yale Younger Poets Award by the acclaimed author W. H. Auden.

After graduating in 1951, Rich received a Guggenheim Fellowship to study abroad at Oxford. When she returned from Europe, Rich married Alfred Conrad, an economics professor at Harvard University whom she met during her undergraduate studies. They settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and had three sons together. Conrad often traveled for work, leaving Rich alone to care for their children. Rich credited the experience of motherhood with “radicalizing” her and fueling her involvement in feminism (Rich, Adrienne. “Split at the Root: An Essay on Jewish Identity.” Nice Jewish Girls: A Lesbian Anthology, edited by Evelyn Torton Beck, Persephone Press, 1982, pp. 67-84).

During the 1950s, Rich published her second poetry volume, The Diamond Cutters (1955), though later she claimed she regretted publishing the book.