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"HOT FLASH"

"HOT FLASH" is a Vital News
Feature of Wise Women's Web:

Adrienne Rich Declines National Medal for the Arts
July, 1997: Wise Women's Conscience Award
Goes to Rich

Adrienne Rich, a writer known equally for her political activism as her poetry, declined a nomination to be given a National Medal for the Arts at the beginning of this month, citing dissatisfaction with the country's declining democracy. She told a New York Times reporter, "I simply felt I can not be used this way."

Rich, who disagrees with the poet W.H. Auden's dictate that poetry does not elicit change, did not want her poetry associated with a government whose leaders and policies she finds objectionable. In her letter to NEA Chairwoman Jane Alexander, she wrote, "the very meaning of art, as I understand it, is incompatible with the cynical politics of this Administration." Rich explained to the Times reporter that part of her dissatisfaction stems from the increasing class distinctions in America that have left much of the money and power in the hands of a few. She proposed, "art means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner-table of power which holds it hostage." Alexander has stated that she understands Rich's position.

Earlier this year, Rich was honored by the Academy of American Poets with the $100,000 Tanning Prize, the largest annual literary prize in the United States. She is the author of fifteen volumes of poetry, which include An Atlas of the Difficult World, What is Found There, and her most recent Dark Fields of the Republic: Poems 1991-1995. She lives in Santa Cruz, California.

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