Poet's Choice

this isn't a modern place

You arrived starving at midnight

I gave you warmed-up food

poured tumblers of brandy

put on Les Barricades Myst¿rieuses

-- the only jazz in the house

We talked for hours of barricades

lesser and greater sorrows

ended up laughing in the thicksilver

birdstruck light

There's a grown-up, wise charm in the comedy of the self here: "late-night staircase inspirations" are the equivalent of staircase wit: the what-I-shoulda-said that comes to one on the stairs after leaving the party. Those inspirations, like "my utopian slant," are not disavowed by the wry laughter. On the contrary, like the cranky dislike for the noose of the highway and the loyalty to the past -- "this isn't a modern place" -- Rich's loyalties and political passions take on conviction from her ability to place them in a particular life, at a specific time. The poem, addressed to a particular person, describing a splendid particular moment "in the thicksilver/birdstruck light" also suggests something more general: the poet's allegorical invitation to us readers, with directions for approaching the poet's work: "Here's how to get to me." It is part of the pleasure, and the point, that the directions change with time: like the poet, an alert reader adapts and takes fresh routes to the destination.

(Adrienne Rich's poem "Archaic" can be found in "Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth: Poems, 2004-2006." Norton. Copyright 2007 by Adrienne Rich.)