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Since the publication of her first volume, A Change of the World, Adrienne Rich has been a leading poet of her generation, challenging received ideals and poetic forms. Drawn to the notion of poetry as a communal art, Rich examines the world through her poetry and lays claim to the poet’s role of witness to a reality. For her, poetry is not an escape and provides no easy consolation. This paper explores the way in which dialogic relationships in Rich’s poetry embody her communal poetry that takes on the role of poetry as witness and engenders truth. As I would argue, Rich’s Midnight Salvage amplifies the poet’s social responsibility through a mosaic of voices in which dialogues challenge a unitary voice and create Kristevan revolutionary effects in poetic language. Engaging with Bakhtin’s theories on the subversive nature of carnivalesque discourse, Kristeva highlights the transposition of signifying systems that words make possible. Just as the interplay of multiple voices during carnival plays an important role in establishing a means by which to change social structures, so text that involves an act of communication effects a redistribution of reality. In Midnight Salvage many poems such as “Char” and “A Long Conversation” in particular pose how the words become social and contextual through the dialogic relationship. Although changes have marked Rich’s career, it is dialogism that consistently follows the trajectory in her works. Rather than merely a poetic method, Rich’s dialogic process conveys the central meaning and mood of her work.
