Representation of the Queer in Adrienne Rich’s poems: Reading the Narratives of Resistance and Destabilization of the ‘Normalised’ Literary Apparatus

 

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to unbiasedly and unabashedly locate among the large corpus of any genre of literature, which is historically, culturally and commercially not a very reliable medium for resistant discourses and alternative life-practices of the queer people because of the suspect bourgeois, capitalist, patriarchal, phallic-ideological, hegemonic, heteronormative, scopophilic, voyeuristic and “mass cultural” motor of the literary forms and practices, the representation of the queer in the poems of Adrienne Rich, a pioneering feminist who is credited with bringing the idea of lesbianism in the poetry world. In Gender Studies, the term “gender” is used to refer and limit only to the social and cultural constructions of masculinity and femininity. Gender is prescribed just like a script and everyone has to perform certain roles following the script. Any avoidance of or deviation from particular gender norms is immediately considered an anomaly and the supposed doer is labelled as non-normative or non-normal and has to suffer social ostracism as is the condition of the queer people in the contemporary society. Literature has always been dominated by heterosexual characters. However, queer discourses do incur destabilizations and do interrogate the medium of literature when working through it. Representations of queer corporeality, for example, do make the scopophilic, male gaze based ‘normalised’ literary apparatus a site of contestation. It is in this context that the paper attempts through a detailed, critical and theoretical analysis of the two poems of Adrienne Rich namely “My Mouth Hovers across Your Breasts” and “The Floating Poem, Unnumbered” to make a reading of the narratives of pain, sufferings, and trauma inflicted upon the lesbians and how these poems boldly announce Rich’s lesbianism and break from any traditional female notions to the world.

Keywords: Adrienne Rich, lesbianism, queer discourses 

          

 “Two women, eye to eye

   measuring each other’s spirit, each

  other’s 

 limitless desire,

a whole new poetry beginning here.” —Adrienne Rich, “Transcendental Etude.”

Acknowledged as one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century, Adrienne Rich is a pioneering feminist who challenged predisposed notions of the American dream and is credited with bringing the idea of feminism and lesbianism in the poetry world. Her poems boldly announce her lesbianism and break from any traditional female notions to the world. The sexual nature at the core of lesbianism is expanded to literal and metaphorical imagery in Rich’s hands. Rich’s extension of it is witnessed in her saying–“A primary intensity between women, an intensity that the world at large has trivialized, caricatured, or invested with evil...it is the lesbian in every woman who is compelled by female energy...the lesbian in us who drives us to feel imaginatively, render in language, grasp, the full connection between woman and woman”. Rich is conveying that the patriarchal society women are brought into has disparaged and fought to eradicate the mutuality women intrinsically feel towards one another. This intrinsic feeling is what drives lesbianism beyond the erotic and sensual into the social and spiritual spheres. 

 

The two poems namely “My Mouth hovers across your breasts” and “The Floating Poem, Unnumbered”, published in the collection Twenty One Love Poems, convey the elements most integral to Rich’s meaning of lesbianism.

The poem “The Floating poem, Unnumbered” details the distinctive sensuality of women erotically engaged together. The poem describes the raw immediate sensations existing in the moment for the two lovers protected in lesbian union. They are away from the journey in “XIII”. While a forward direction is still not set for them they are without concern for anything but this moment of their bodies in contact, pleasing one another as only they can. The only direction the speaker and her lover in the poem are moving is towards each other’s bodies, a descent if one will. Critic Suzanne Juhasz argues Rich “consistently uses imagery of descent into depths both physical and sacred”. The body is sacred, inside her lover’s thighs the speaker asserts her tongue has found “innocence and wisdom”.

A reader can perceive this poem as being devoid of the political and social significance and commentary as the other poems in the collection, and find it to be judged about the erotic. Rich confutes this notion. She declares there is direct lesbian correlation with sensuality and sociability, “we can connect these rebellions...With the physical passion of women for whom which is central existence: the erotic sensuality...the most violently erased fact of female experience”. The speaker’s bluntness about her sexual exploits is a confrontation echoing Rich’s sentiment, she refuses to bow down or allow her experiences with her lover to be eradicated and swept over by the patriarchal society controlling what is history. Oktenberg declares that what lesbians “experience as beautiful and as absolutely natural, the rest of society views as ugly and perverted”. That “ugliness” is fully exposed to the public by the speaker with careful consideration to show its innate splendour. The sensations of her desire for another women are in ink on a page; no longer capable of being erased.

The speaker begins the poem stating “whatever happens with us” and ends with “whatever happens this is”. The speaker does not care for what the future may hold because this sensual moment will always be immersed with them. The notion of celebrating the present through erotic indulgence is also evident with the speaker’s chronicle of “the live, insatiate dance of your nipples in my mouth”. The sex-based dance conveys the untaken, existing dynamic of their relation moving in perfect rhythm together. It is noted by critics that in Rich’s poems “sexuality involves both relieving and reliving alienation”. The alienation and aloneness felt by the speaker is indeed both revisited and relieved by the speaker in “The Floating Poem, Unnumbered.” She confesses that her lover’s body “will haunt mine [her]”, always remaining with her spiritually but possibly without physicality. The description of the speaker’s lover reaching and pleasing her with the same hands that clutched her heart is “reaching where I had been waiting for years for you in my rose-wet cave”. The orgasmic pleasure the partner’s fingers and tongue provide to the speaker’s most cherished region sparks the recognition that they are spiritually and sensually involved with other women at long last.

The newfound existence also serves as a reminder of the years spent away from each other as the speaker toiled under the title of wife and mother. This idea of time being wasted as mother and wife is referenced earlier in the poem: “your love making, like the half-curled frond/of the fiddlehead fern in forests/just washed by the sun” is both evocative of a female orgasm in the description of flower budding and blooming under a wash of a new season’s sensations, but also the speaker’s newly found lesbian connection. After being coiled up as a wife and mother she is finally blossoming, basking in the sun after her escape from the harsh winter those years represented. Juhasz claims, “Rich’s is the daylight voice of one who is awake, describing the dream she has had, the place she has been”. In this case, the daylight voice of the speaker is alive and well after finally being awakened from her nightmare of so many years in the throes of an oppressive lifestyle when she was away from the lesbian unison so central to her needs and desires.          

“The Floating Poem, Unnumbered”, therefore, openly celebrates the erotic exhilaration of women entwined together without regard for prejudiced societal values and their displacement within them. Regardless of the messages Rich is conveying, at the heart of this poem is the love between the speaker and her partner. The literary relationship projects the immense power two women in love encompass.

In “My Mouth Hovers Across Your Breasts”, Rich discovers the beauty and comfort of intimacy shared with another women. She reconfigures the trope of the erotic to bring together and celebrate the love and desire shared between women. Here, another constraint of gender relations is revoked, and she explores the potential of the erotic to capture the transcendent love that goes beyond the prescribed permutations of desire in society. However, the poem could also be read in a heterosexual frame, with a male poet-persona instead of an assumed female poet-persona, and this is indeed an example of the subtlety of Rich’s poetry. The sexual love depicted in the poem could maneuver between homosexual and heterosexual love, without a clear-cut division separating the two. This is indicative of the way postmodernism has eroded traditional lines of sexuality, allowing for multiplicity and profusion.   

“My Mouth Hovers Across Your Breasts” explains the author's intimate cravings of the woman in bed with her. The author specifically uses “hover” because she wanted to describe how sexually attracted she was to her. It seems as if the moment that she experienced was not so true. The author uses “delicate” to describe the tantalizing form of expression for her woman. She emphasises intensity of their bodies connecting as one. Then she refers to “tough and delicate we play rings” to their playfulness as being rough with their movements and then slowly becoming passionate towards one another. This describes the intimate setting as she lies on top of her significant other in hope of enticing her mentally, physically, and emotionally. The candles burning around the room are symbolic of their burning love for one another. The author describes the winter as setting the mood, which confirms the intimate atmosphere. She uses “pleasures of winter sudden, wild and delicate” to explain the actions of her and her lover. The author emphasizes “exact” to show the precise movement of her tongue on the woman’s body. She concludes with “my love hot on your scent” to show how engaged she is with this woman. The tone throughout this poem reveals an explicit relationship between her and another woman. It creates a deep feeling of intense affection that exuberates the mood.

As we can see in this examination of Rich’s writing, she expands lesbianism beyond the biological attraction of woman to woman to a universally complex illustration. In these two poems, the love between two women is used to further develop Rich’s interpretation of this lesbian essence.

To conclude, talking about the relevance of her poems Rich commented, “It was written to challenge the erasure of lesbian existence from a large amount of scholarly feminist literature. It was not written to widen divisions but to encourage heterosexual feminists to examine heterosexuality as a political institution which disempowers women and to change it”. The poems of Rich are a gift and a celebration for all the depressed lesbians who feel insecure to express their feelings and demands. Her poems are an attempt to change the prevalent notion of women’s dependence on men for social and economic supports, as well as for adult sexuality and psychological completion. Despite being vilified, mocked, and belittled as dangerous, Rich believes women will continue to surge forward and toward one another with their lesbian attachment to one another.