Exploring Revision

Rich says, "Until I could tap into the very rich ocean, I think that my work was constrained in certain ways. There's this fear of anger in women, which is partly because we've been told it was always destructive, it was always unseemly, and unwomanly and monstrous- (624).
             This allows me to say that when Rich was composing her poems, she was writing with a creative anger that allowed her to get in touch with herself, and realize problems of language and style as well as problems of energy and survival--what she calls "problems for the woman writer."" Rich says, "And, in the work of both these poets, (men vs. women) it is finally the woman's sense of herself--embattled, possessed "that gives the poetry its dynamic charge, its rhythms of struggle, need, will, and female energy- (630). Rich feels that the work of men appears as, "if not a dream, a fascination and a terror; and that the source of the fascination and the terror is, simply, Man's power "to dominate, tyrannize, choose or reject the woman- (630).
             Rich thinks that readers should become involved in reading, and also conscious of what is happening structurally. She feels that readers should pay close attention to the material, the theme, and language of the written work. She says, "No male has written primarily or even largely for women, or with the sense of women's criticism as a consideration when he chooses his materials, his theme, his language- (631). She also says that we should ask questions like "So what does she do (as an author)? What did I do (as a reader)?- (632) and questions the poets own "peculiar keenness and ambivalence."".
             Rich evolved noticeably as a poet and also as a woman through the selected poems. Her early poems have a typical poetic rhythm to them and they rhyme. An example would be "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers- (1951). The first two lines rhyme. "Aunt Jennifer's tigers stride across a screen, Bright topaz denizens of a world of green- (632).