A Poet of Unswerving Vision Adrienne Rich, for decades among the most influential writers of the feminist movement and one of the best-known American public intellectuals, has died aged 82. Margalit Fox writes in a tribute that she was a poet of towering reputation and towering rage, whose work - distinguished by an unswerving progressive vision and a dazzling, empathic ferocity - brought the oppression of women and lesbians to the forefront of poetic discourse.