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Adrienne Rich's "Planetarium" Analysis

The poem is about Caroline Herschel, an 18th century astronomer and sister of William Herschel. It discusses her role as a female astronomer, making discoveries like eight comets over her 98 year lifetime, working with instruments to study the night sky. The poem reflects on how seeing the universe through telescopes can change our perspectives, with the speaker feeling bombarded by signals from space yet standing firm as "an instrument in the shape of a woman" seeking to translate pulsations into images.

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Marin Stojanović
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1K views2 pages

Adrienne Rich's "Planetarium" Analysis

The poem is about Caroline Herschel, an 18th century astronomer and sister of William Herschel. It discusses her role as a female astronomer, making discoveries like eight comets over her 98 year lifetime, working with instruments to study the night sky. The poem reflects on how seeing the universe through telescopes can change our perspectives, with the speaker feeling bombarded by signals from space yet standing firm as "an instrument in the shape of a woman" seeking to translate pulsations into images.

Uploaded by

Marin Stojanović
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as TXT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

Planetarium

BY ADRIENNE RICH
Thinking of Caroline Herschel (1750�1848)
astronomer, sister of William; and others.

A woman in the shape of a monster


a monster in the shape of a woman
the skies are full of them

a woman �in the snow


among the Clocks and instruments
or measuring the ground with poles�

in her 98 years to discover


8 comets

she whom the moon ruled


like us
levitating into the night sky
riding the polished lenses

Galaxies of women, there


doing penance for impetuousness
ribs chilled
in those spaces of the mind

An eye,

�virile, precise and absolutely certain�


from the mad webs of Uranusborg

encountering the NOVA

every impulse of light exploding

from the core


as life flies out of us

Tycho whispering at last


�Let me not seem to have lived in vain�

What we see, we see


and seeing is changing

the light that shrivels a mountain


and leaves a man alive

Heartbeat of the pulsar


heart sweating through my body

The radio impulse


pouring in from Taurus

I am bombarded yet I stand

I have been standing all my life in the


direct path of a battery of signals
the most accurately transmitted most
untranslatable language in the universe
I am a galactic cloud so deep so invo-
luted that a light wave could take 15
years to travel through me And has
taken I am an instrument in the shape
of a woman trying to translate pulsations
into images for the relief of the body
and the reconstruction of the mind.

Planetarium BY ADRIENNE RICH Thinking of Caroline Herschel (1750 1848)  astronomer, sister of William; and others. A woman i
untranslatable language in the universe I am a galactic cloud so deep so invo- luted that a light wave could take 15

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