FORMALISM OR “THE REGIME OF TRUTH”: A READING OF ADRIENNE RICH’S A CHANGE OF WORLD

Formalism in Adrienne Rich?s first book, A Change of World, has attracted different critics and scholars so far. In their interpretations, it seems that they have taken it for granted that Adrienne Rich was a formalist. But none of them has ever presented the cause for the emergence of formalism in Adrienne Rich?s early poetry. In this paper, I draw upon Michel Foucault?s theory of “repressive power” and demonstrate that formalism was actually “the regime of truth” which determined ?true/false? poetry for the young poet and excluded some poetic discourses and permitted only some particular ones to come into being in her first book.