A Valediction Forbidding Mourning
My swirling wants. Your frozen lips.
The grammar turned and attacked me.
Themes, written under duress.
Emptiness of the notations.
They gave me a drug that slowed the healing of wounds.
I want you to see this before I leave:
the experience of repetition as death
the failure of criticism to locate the pain
the poster in the bus that said:
my bleeding is under control
A red plant in a cemetery of plastic wreaths.
A last attempt: the language is a dialect called metaphor.
These images go unglossed: hair, glacier, flashlight.
When I think of a landscape I am thinking of a time.
When I talk of taking a trip I mean forever.
I could say: those mountains have a meaning
but further than that I could not say.
To do something very common, in my own way.
-Adrienne Rich
Poem of the Month 
I’m much impressed about this poem and pray that poems like this will continue to console and uplift the down hearted.
But by the way, how do i get the appreciation?
Adrienne ‘s poetry is amazing, she has this strong,
intuitive, knowing-ness about her, her words.
is cemetery spelled cemetAry for a reason?
No, in my book it is spelled “cemetery” which is the correct spelling. Not too sure why it is spelled like that here… it’s wrong.
I got the poem from here:
http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/adrienne_rich/11762
where they spell it “cemetary.” On further review, I am inclined to believe this is not the spelling in the original poem.
Will make the change.
interesting that rich use Donnes title. this represents her knowlede of the british literature ‘canon’. Donne is taught in most institutions as being ‘good’ worth study and artfull. rish shows her education backround and truly demonstrates what it has done. it has created for the female a lifeless, thoughtless, mundane existance.
rich wants to see more work from women about women and to stop men from claiming that her “bleeding is under control”. for men to stop claiming dominance in more than lterature but in life, in society.
if you have read Donne’s poem you will find that the woman is a very static, unmoving, stolid figure in life. she is the unmoving foot of the compass (not a magnetic compass but the geometry tool). we have been inundated with male work in litrature, lets open a chapter for men and women together.
oh…
and i wonder if ayone has any furthur comments. what about the last line of Rich’s poem “to do some thing very common, in my own way”. also what about the punctuation in consistancy.
also i se the images of hair, and glacier as very slow moving. slow in growth or slow in recession. but what about flashlight? is this an image of isolated light. concentrated light, an incomplete picture.
what say you!?
[…] 10. A Valediction Forbidding Mourning (424) […]
[…] time) by Theodore Roethke, or “Deathless Aphrodite of the Spangled Mind,” by Sappho, or “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning,” by Adrienne Rich, or “For the Young Who Want To” by Marge Piercy, or […]
Wonderful and powerful. Lines that strike home, inside the heart, a language of its own. Such as:
the experience of repetition as death
the failure of criticism to locate the pain
the poster in the bus that said:
my bleeding is under control
Thank you. It moved me, hurt me, made me consider meaning.
Randy Mazie
That’s the best a poem can do, I think.