Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth

A new volume from Adrienne Rich, "Telephone Ringing in the Labyrinth" is one of her most unpredictable and evocative collections. In the folk/blues tradition behind "Rhyme", in the incantatory pattern of "Behind the Motel", in the voices from past and present in "Letters Censored, Shredded, Returned to Sender or Judged Unfit to Send", in the dystopic scenes and intimate encounters of "Draft No. 2006", in the mysterious negotiations of the title poem, the tempos and moods of this book constantly vary. Here, Rich draws on the artistic means of a lifetime.

"Here are blues refrains, improvisations, and the sound of birdsong. Mixed in with poems about prison life, about torture, about Wallace Stevens, it forms a potent volume."

Adrienne Rich (1929–2012) was an award-winning poet, influential essayist, radical feminist, and major public intellectual of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. She wrote two dozen volumes of poetry, including the National Book Award–winning Diving into the Wreck, and more than a half-dozen of prose.