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Question: What is the poem saying!? Intesting but very hard to analyse!?
If Your Name Is on the List
-Addriene Rich

If your name is on the list of judges
you're one of them
though you fought their hardening
assumptions went and stood
alone by the window while they
concurred
It wasn't enough to hold your singular
minority opinion
You had to face the three bridges
down the river
your old ambitions
flamboyant in bloodstained mist

You had to carry off under arm
and write up in perfect loneliness
your soul-splitting dissent

Yes, I know a soul can be partitioned like a country
In all the new inhere old judgments
loyalties crumbling send up sparks and smoke
We want to be part of the future dragging in
what pure futurity can't use

Sudddenly a narrow street a little beach a little century
screams Don't let me go

Don't let me die Do you forget
what we were to each other

1999

I believe it may have something to do with the destroying of the environment by human kind but please give me ur opinion :)Www@QuestionHome@Com


Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:
I believe she's writing a feminist's poem about her socio-political situation as a female poet!. As a woman, and Jewish, she's a minority, especially since she's a vocal minority in a male dominated arena!. She also speaks of the changing world order and the situation of immigrants, as well as the end of an era at the beginning of the new milleneum!. The poem deals with more than one subject and you need to read more of her work in order to put it into any sort of context!.Www@QuestionHome@Com