I've decided to let a random number generator decide what books I read this month (all my books are numbered because I have Anxiety), and the first book it generated was #770 so it was time for An Atlas of the Difficult World! Adrienne Rich had been on my radar as a poet I needed to read for a while and came highly recommended to me by friends, but I had never read any of her work. Now that I have, I can't believe I waited this long!

In An Atlas of the Difficult World, Rich weaves together the personal and the political in a way that will just absolutely wrecked me. It's a hard balance to strike, making those two sides of the coin blend together seamlessly. But Rich, as a poet and a feminist, understands that the personal is always political. It's a part of her daily reality, and so it is a part of her art and poetry. In several of her poems, she explores the effects of World War II on Jewish survivors as they are surrounded by the objects of a lost life, now the keepers of stories that are hard to tell. The Dream-Site is perhaps her most overtly political poem, questioning patriotism and what it means to be a citizen without offering solutions or grand statements. Rich's poems are not about answers but instead interested in exploring the questions.

On the more personal side of her poetry, I deeply enjoyed Dedications and Final Notations. I read those poems and was like, "Oh yeah, makes sense this was nominated for a Pulitzer." It was honest and critical and yet radically hopeful. I never got the sense that Rich had given up on the world. Instead, she was holding up a mirror in hopes she could make it better.

I will definitely be checking out more Adrienne Rich poetry in the future. I highly recommend this collection and also reading it while listening to Stick Season (Forever Edition) by Noah Kahan. They pair really well together.