The Poetics of Time and Body in Adrienne Rich’s Selected Poems

Time and the body, as they are poeticised in the poetic domain, have been relegated to the margins of postmodernist poetry since critics and scholars have not provided a full insight into these phenomena. This study examines the poems "Endpaper," "August," "Incipience," "Contradictions," "Rape," and "Diving into the Wreck" from Adrienne Rich's Selected Poems towards a comprehension of the temporal and corporeal representations in her works. This paper utilises postmodern concepts regarding time and the body. In Rich's poems, time represents a genuine existence from a psychological aspect. In addition, the poet's utopian feminist cultural identity reveals the body. The overall conclusion of the study is that Rich's poetry lacks an authentic feminist voice.