Author(s): Adrienne Rich

Poetry

The poems in this stirring collection range from the politically outraged 'Ballade of the Poverties' to the intimate address to a poetic alter ego, the eponymous 'Axel Avákar'. At times she grapples with horrors, as in 'Don't Flinch': 'The news you were reading/(who tramples whom) is antique/ and on the death pages you've seen already/worms doing their normal work/ on the life that was…' Everywhere, her fractured, powerful verse is suffused with the intense emotion of an artistic lifetime.