Twitter mourns feminist poet Adrienne Rich

News of the death of American poet Adrienne Rich reverberated across Twitter, becoming a top globally trending topic just moments after it was first tweeted.

The news broke on Twitter before it was published by any mainstream media.

My deepest bows to Adrienne Rich, 4the power of her life, her presence, her words. May we all work toward her “dream of a common language.”

—T Tempest Williams (@TempestWilliams) March 28, 2012

Just got very sad news: the poet Adrienne Rich has died.

— John McMurtrie (@McMurtrieSF) March 28, 2012

Given Twitter’s propensity for killing off high-profile people on regular occasions, it’s hardly surprising that some were unwilling to invest too much emotion in the news until it was confirmed by an official news source:

Can anyone confirm? RT @McMurtrieSF Just got very sad news: the poet Adrienne Rich has died.

— NPR Books (@nprbooks) March 28, 2012

Twitter says poet Adrienne Rich has died. Oh, I hope it’s not true. She was a huge influence on my writing.

— Tim Pratt (@timpratt) March 28, 2012

When the Rich’s passing was eventually confirmed, a number of Twitter users quoted her works, with her poem “Diving into the Wreck” a particular favourite:

“[Art] means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of the power which holds it hostage.” RIP Adrienne Rich poets.org/poet.php/prmPI…

— Stella Meridian (@stellameridian) March 28, 2012

“She had thought the studio would keep itself; no dust upon the furniture of love.” RIP Adrienne Rich.

— Mrs. Lovett (@ChrisseyLikeee) March 28, 2012

“It will be short, it will take all your breath / It will not be simple,” | RIP Adrienne Rich (themillions.com/2012/03/it-wil…)

— The Millions(@The_Millions) March 28, 2012

“I should be forced to look upon you whole/The way we look upon the things we lose.” RIP Adrienne Rich

— Meredith Schwartz (@Kalendaries) March 28, 2012

“but there come times–perhaps this is one of them–when we have to take ourselves more seriously or die” RIP Adrienne Rich

— Jacqueline Allain (@missjackay) March 28, 2012

“my story flows in more than one direction/a delta springing from the river bed/with its five fingers spread.” RIP Adrienne Rich.

— lindsayeanet (@lindsayeanet) March 28, 2012

…If this were a map/it would be not a map of choices but a map of variations/on the one great choice… RIP Adrienne Rich.

— Christopher Rowe (@ChristopherRowe) March 28, 2012

“the thing I came for / the wreck and not the story of the wreck/ the thing itself and not the myth” RIP Adrienne Rich bit.ly/HgStnH

— amardeep singh (@Electrostani) March 28, 2012

“The door itself makes no promises./It is only a door.” RIP Adrienne Rich. I read this poem at my seder each year bit.ly/GXDZY3

— Esther Breger (@estherbreger) March 28, 2012

Born in 1929, Rich was variously a poet, academic, activist, and essayist. Her increasing involvement with radical political movements in the late 1960s, in part, led to her divorce from Alfred Haskell Conrad, an economics professor at Harvard University.

In 1976, she began her life-long relationship with Jamaican-born novelist and editor Michelle Cliff.

For Rich, lesbianism was apparently a personal as well political issue. In Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution, she explains how “the suppressed lesbian I had been carrying in me since adolescence began to stretch her limbs.”

Rich died at her home in Santa Cruz, California. Her son Pablo Conrad told the LA Times that her death resulted from long-term rheumatoid arthritis.