The Will to Change was published by W.W. Norton in 1971. Its title comes from Charles Olson (“what does not change / is the will to change”), and the collection represents Rich’s most formally radical work: poems fragmented like cinematic montage, poems that incorporate documentary material, poems that refuse the linear coherence of traditional lyric.
The political context is the late 1960s: Vietnam, Black Power, the New Left, the nascent women’s movement. Rich responds to this moment of upheaval not by writing “protest poetry” (which she considered aesthetically inadequate) but by changing the form of poetry itself — making it reflect the fragmentation, urgency, and moral confusion of the historical moment. “Shooting Script” and “The Burning of Paper Instead of Children” are sequence poems that move between languages, registers, and perspectives without providing the comfort of resolution.
The collection represents the bridge between Rich’s earlier work (controlled, accomplished, ultimately inadequate to her needs) and the powerful clarity of Diving into the Wreck (two years later). In The Will to Change, she is breaking the old forms but has not yet discovered what will replace them — making the collection both difficult and revelatory.
Collecting The Will to Change
First edition (W.W. Norton, New York, 1971): Cloth with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $75–$200
- Very good: $30–$75