Seven Skins by Adrienne Rich
"Seven Skins" is a poetry collection by Adrienne Rich that delves into themes of war, memory, and the complexities of power through a deeply personal lens. The poem focuses on the journey of a young woman in 1952 as she navigates the barriers of knowledge and societal expectations within the context of postwar America. Rich employs the character of Vic Greenberg, a paraplegic veteran, to highlight the physical and metaphorical limitations imposed by society, contrasting his confidence and self-awareness with the woman's insecurities and societal pressures. The poem underscores the struggle for understanding and the act of remembering, revealing how memory is often intertwined with forgetting and how societal norms can stifle individual desires and identities. Rich's work challenges readers to engage critically with the social contexts that shape personal narratives and historical truths. Through vivid imagery and symbolism, "Seven Skins" invites exploration of the complexities of human experience against the backdrop of historical upheaval. The poem is a poignant reflection on the intersections of personal and collective memory, making it a compelling piece for those interested in the dynamics of memory and identity in the modern world.
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Seven Skins by Adrienne Rich
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1999 (collected in Midnight Salvage, 1999)
Type of work: Poem
The Work
Midnight Salvage explores a unique path of poetry for Rich. In it, she uses real people to tell her stories of war, memory, history, and the violence of power. These are all themes with which Rich’s readers are familiar, but in this collection she requires her readers to question the social context, as well as what is accepted as truth.
“Seven Skins” portrays a young woman’s quest for knowledge in 1952. It begins in the library, where Rich makes a symbolic reference to elevation. A graduate student, Vic Greenberg, who is a “paraplegic GI-Bill of Rights Jew” rolls into the elevator and goes “up into the great stacks where all knowledge should and is and shall be stored like sacred grain,” while the rest of the world remains outside the library “stuck amid so many smiles.” Those outside the library are “lonely” for knowledge too but choose not to permeate the invisible barriers set forth because of the war; they remain “aground.”
Rich uses the limitations of one’s handicap, whether it be physical or mental, to point to the larger limitations of postwar society, including the inaccuracy of memory and one’s inability to re-create events with factual detail. She argues that part of remembering is re-creating what is lost in translation: “And this is only memory, no more/ so this is how you remember.” When one is outlining history, especially the history of a war society, remembering becomes entrenched in forgetting certain things.
Rich references Vic’s difficult mobility throughout the poem. He chooses a restaurant “which happens to have no stairs” and showers in a tub with “suction-cupped rubber mats.” Vic embraces his life and accepts his fate. He is confident and self-aware. He is everything that the young woman is not. She is a girl “ready for breaking open like a lobster” and “a mass of swimmy legs.” When Vic asks “the usual question” of whether she will join him for a postdinner drink in his room, she answers the way in which she believes any woman “has to answer/ you don’t even think.” Though the woman wants to go, and imagines the kind of night that she and Vic might have experienced between his “linen-service/ sheets,” she declines his offer, unable to defy the woman whom society judges she should be.
Bibliography
Dickie, Margaret. Stein, Bishop, and Rich: Lyrics of Love, War, and Peace. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997.
Gwiazda, Piotr. “’Nothing Else Left to Read’: Poetry and Audience in Adrienne Rich’s ’An Atlas of the Difficult World.’” Journal of Modern Literature 28, no. 2 (Winter, 2005): 165-188.
Halpern, Nick. Everyday and Prophetic: The Poetry of Lowell, Ammons, Merrill, and Rich. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003.
Keyes, Claire. The Aesthetics of Power: The Poetry of Adrienne Rich. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986.
O’Reilly, Andrea. From Motherhood and Mothering: The Legacy of Adrienne Rich’s “Of Woman Born.” New York: State University of New York Press, 2004.
Ostriker, Alice. Writing Like a Woman. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1983.
Spencer, Luke. “That Light of Outrage: The Historicism of Adrienne Rich.” English: Journal of the English Association 51, no. 200 (Summer, 2002): 145-160.
Yorke, Liz. Adrienne Rich: Passion, Politics, and the Body. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1998.