‘She got swept too far. She deliberately made herself ugly and wrote those extreme and ridiculous poems.’ Adrienne Rich lived enough for at least two lifetimes and not everyone was happy about it.

Today’s episode looks at the poem Integrity from A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far: Poems 1978-1981. I also pull some context from Boundary Conditions: Adrienne Rich’s collected poems by Dan Chiasson and Le Ann Schreiber’s review of A Wild Patience from 1981.

Towards the end I give a shout out to Jessica Valenti and Lindy West, and read part of Lindy’s piece Donald and Billy on the Bus.