The following version of this poem was used to create this guide: Rich, Adrienne. “A Valediction, Forbidding Mourning." Fu Jen Literature Databank. http://www.eng.fju.edu.tw/English_Literature/adrienne_rich/rich_forbid.htm

Note that all parenthetical citations within the guide refer to the lines of the poem from which the quotations are taken.

Adrienne Rich was born into an academic family in Baltimore, Maryland in 1929. She graduated from Radcliffe College (now part of Harvard) and married in 1953, having three children with her husband. She became a feminist and political radical and started to publish her poetry. Her marriage was strained, and soon after she moved out, her husband committed suicide. After her husband's death in 1970, Rich moved in with her partner, Michelle Cliffe, with whom she spent the rest of her life. She wrote extensively about gender, lesbianism, and her family's Jewish heritage. Many of her writings were highly controversial, but she was also known as a leading intellectual light of American culture. She died in 2012, from effects of the rheumatoid arthritis from which she had suffered for most of her life.