“어떤 전쟁이든 죽은 이들에겐 소용없잖아요”― 에이드리언 리치, 베트남 전쟁 그리고 페미니즘

Abstract

The Vietnam War has rarely been remembered by literary critics of modern American poetry. It is mainly because of the persistent assumption that too much engagement in politics will inevitably sacrifice aesthetics of poetry. However, Adrienne Rich has never stood outside history, and her poetry of social engagement has never been outside artistic merits. Thus recasting three of her Vietnam war poems in the discursive frame of feminism, this paper tries to illuminate Rich’s feminist gaze that maintains lyrical aesthetics while reflecting the tensions between patriotism and civil right and between humanism and individualism in the times of war. In the process it emphasizes that she has made earnest efforts to match her feminist desire with her strong sense of civic duty and that she has realized her wish to become a tool that captures the other frames of war and translates the pulses of the nation. Truly, she has created a poetic space that invites readers to remember their country’s cultural amnesia and to meditate on the unavoidable reality that being a citizen involves being responsible for the history and politics of his/her motherland. Finally, this essay tries to point it out as her poetic achievement that by transforming art into an artifact that bears the specific history it was produced, she has fulfilled her political as well as artistic vision of ‘poetry in life.’