Human Rights and the Work of Lyric in Adrienne Rich

More fully than any other recent American poet, Adrienne Rich has marshalled the resources of poetry to address social injustice. Rich's postfeminist work is characterised by an expanding moral responsiveness that culminates in the strong global emphasis of her twenty-first century volumes. Rich's exploration of the moral and emotional aspects of global commitment is deeply coherent with philosopher Charles Taylor's account of secular modernity. This essay argues that the empowered stance of Rich's earlier work gives way to a sense of finitude that reflects the fragilised belief systems of a secular, plural society but also serves as a basis for affiliation across the huge spaces of a global culture.