An Atlas of the Difficult World

“By Blue Ontario’s Shore” by Walt Whitman (1881)

Many of Whitman’s grandiloquent democratic verses celebrating the emerging national identity can be paired with Rich’s poem. She readily acknowledged his influence in her mid-career departure into free verse. Like Rich, Whitman here uses a chanted motif to create the poem’s expansive sonic impact. Also like Rich, he delights most in America’s sweeping natural wonders. 

The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot (1922)

Rich’s cycle of poems is often compared to Eliot’s post-World War I work. Both works take a broad and unblinking assessment of their cultural era. Like Rich, Eliot in his closing stanza is determined to find some avenue to hope in a dark time. Both authors soberly assess the psychological and spiritual damage done to a country by an ill-conceived war. Although Eliot is more spiritual than Rich, both want to avoid despair despite the evidence of their culture in peril.

“Elegy in Joy” by Muriel Rukeyser (1949)

Rich first read the poems of her contemporary Rukeyser in college; later, she credited Rukeyser’s influence on her own work. This poem is an example of Rukeyser’s social protest poetry, which guided Rich’s own perception of her role as Citizen Poet bound to give testimony to the problems facing America.