Trying to Talk with a Man by Adrienne Rich

Trying to Talk with a Man was published in 1971 in Rich’s collection The Will to Change, and it is set in the Nevada desert where nuclear weapons are being tested. The poem is personal and political at once: it presents a couple at an impasse, unable to communicate, while the landscape around them literally embodies destruction. Rich uses the nuclear testing site as more than a setting. It becomes a mirror for the couple’s failing relationship and the silence they cannot break.

What makes this poem different from some of Rich’s other relationship poems is its anger. This is not wistful or conflicted; it is frustrated and claustrophobic. The woman feels helpless not because she is weak, but because the man uses his authority like a weapon: he speaks the clinical language of danger and equipment while, in Rich’s own devastating line, really he is just looking at her “like an emergency” (l. 32). The poem ends with a quiet devastation: they came to test bombs, but they are testing something else entirely, and the truth of that hangs in the final lines.

Poem at a Glance

Form: Free verse, 39 lines, no regular stanza pattern
Tone: Tense, disillusioned, increasingly frustrated
Key theme: The breakdown of communication between lovers; power imbalance in relationships; political and personal destruction as parallel
Written: 1971, from The Will to Change
Best for: Paper 2 questions on relationships, Rich’s political themes, or the language of power

Section-by-Section Analysis

Lines 1-7: The Desert Setting

The poem opens with a statement that functions as both fact and confession: “Out in this desert we are testing bombs,” (l. 1) – Rich immediately naming why the couple has come. The directness is striking. No mystery, no ambiguity about why they are in this place, a stretch of land written off as sacrificial, a place where destruction is the purpose.

Rich then introduces what will become one of the poem’s central images. “Sometimes I feel an underground river” (l. 3), she writes, and goes on to describe that current forcing its way between damaged cliffs, moving at an angle rather than directly forward, into land already condemned. The underground river represents understanding that exists but is trapped, forced between damaged landscape. This is what happens in a relationship where one person is trying to reach the other but the conditions are hostile. The river is not flowing freely; it is fighting against the terrain.

Lines 8-14: What Was Left Behind

There is a shift to past tense and memory: what the couple had to give up to get here, and then a list of what was sacrificed to reach this place. The specific domestic details are chosen with care – old records, films, a childhood bakery’s cookies – suggesting cultural life, connection, normalcy, small innocent pleasures. But the item that turns the list is the language itself: not just the words of love, but the words of despair too, both given up in the same breath. Rich is saying: to be here, we gave up not just comfort but the language itself.

Notice that this section reads like a genuine loss. Rich is not being ironic or detached. There is a sadness here about what the couple abandoned to come to this desert, to this testing site. The image of the couple pretending to be children again suggests an innocence they can no longer recover.

Lines 22-23: The Silence

The couple came out to this desert meaning to change something, and the sentence describing that intention breaks off unfinished. What follows is a physical description of the desert environment, but it is really describing the emotional environment between them, ending on a single word that lands hard after the description of the ghost town’s stillness: their silence “is familiar” (l. 22). This is crucial. The silence of the desert is one thing, but the silence they have brought with them is worse because it is familiar. It has been with them all along, even before they left home.

Then the accusation: everything they had been saying up to that point, Rich suggests, was really an effort to cover the silence over, and now, out here, they are finally up against it directly. All their previous conversation, all the words they used to say, were attempts to cover over this silence. Now there is no more running. The silence is inescapable.

Lines 26-32: Helplessness and Power

The shift here is abrupt and devastating: out here, the speaker feels more helpless with her partner than she would alone. This is not about physical vulnerability. She is saying that his presence makes her less, not more, able to cope. Rich writes that “You mention the danger / and list the equipment” (l. 28-29) in the clinical language of a technician, and the couple talk of people caring for each other in emergencies as though discussing an abstraction. But then comes the reversal: “but you look at me like an emergency” (l. 32). This line undoes everything that came before it. All his talk of danger and equipment is not actually about the bombs or the desert. It is about how he sees her. She is the problem to be managed, the crisis to be controlled.

The lines that follow are quietly brutal, comparing his heat to power and his eyes to something that reflects an exit sign. His attractiveness, his presence, his confidence; all of it reads to her as power, as something that closes off rather than opens up. He is showing her the way out, or more accurately, showing her that he will leave.

Lines 33-39: The Final Reckoning

The final lines are what bring everything into focus. He gets up and paces the floor, talking of the danger as though it were not the two of them, as though they were testing anything else at all. He talks about danger as though they are abstract observers, scientists conducting an experiment. He separates himself from the danger. But Rich is saying: you are the danger. The bombs are metaphorical compared to this.

The poem offers no resolution. It does not end with her leaving or him changing. It ends with the recognition that they came to test bombs, but what they are really testing is whether this relationship can survive at all. And the way the poem concludes, with its repeated “as if” construction, suggests she already knows the answer.

Key Themes

The Failure of Communication

This is the central wound of the poem. Two people are in the same physical space, but they cannot reach each other. The underground river of understanding discussed above is real, but it is trapped. Every attempt at communication collapses. He speaks the language of mechanics and danger; she speaks the language of longing and loss. They are not having the same conversation.

Political and Personal Destruction as Parallel

Rich does not keep these two levels separate. The nuclear testing site is not a metaphor for the relationship; it is the context that reveals what the relationship actually is. Just as the desert is being destroyed by weapons testing, the couple’s ability to connect is being destroyed by the man’s refusal to engage with her authentically. The public violence and the private violence run alongside each other.

Power Imbalance in Relationships

Rich shows power as something subtle and internalised. He does not control her through overt force; he controls her through his indifference, his clinical language, his ability to look at her as though she were the crisis. She is helpless precisely because she cares and he does not. His power lies in his detachment.

Techniques Worth Noting

Extended Metaphor: The Nuclear Desert

The desert is not just a setting. It is a working metaphor for the relationship itself: condemned, deformed, dangerous, silent. The underground river discussed above represents the emotional truth trying to move beneath the surface, and the damaged cliffs it forces its way between describe both the physical landscape and the damage done to the couple’s ability to connect. The metaphor is sustained throughout and gives the poem its power.

Juxtaposition of Domestic and Destructive

The list of what they left behind – records, cookies, children’s play – is placed directly against the language of bombs and nuclear testing. This juxtaposition is not accidental. Rich is showing you what is being sacrificed: warmth, memory, innocence, the capacity to love. The contrast makes clear what hangs in the balance.

Pronoun Shifts: From We to I to You

The poem begins in the first person plural, establishing a shared purpose in coming to the desert. By the middle section, it narrows to the first person singular and her own helplessness. By the end, it is entirely “you”: what he says, what he does. These shifts show a growing isolation and a clarifying awareness of who bears responsibility. The pronouns themselves are a map of the relationship’s deterioration.

The List as Technique

The list of domestic losses in lines 8-14 is a technique Rich uses to accumulate emotional weight. Each item is concrete and specific. By the time you finish the list, you feel the weight of what was abandoned. Lists are a way of saying: there is so much, I cannot contain it in sentences. This is Leaving Cert examiner material.

The Final Three Lines as Devastating Closure

The poem’s closing lines repeat the phrase “as if” twice in quick succession, suggesting something impossible, a pretence that cannot hold. He is pretending the danger is external, but she knows the danger is him. The poem does not resolve anything; it crystallises the moment of recognition. That is much more powerful than any neat ending would be.

Using This Poem in the Exam

Trying to Talk with a Man is a strong choice for any Paper 2 question about power, relationships, or Rich’s engagement with political themes. It pairs naturally with Living in Sin (both explore the gap between what a woman hopes for and what a relationship actually is) and with From a Survivor (which reflects back on a relationship from a position of greater clarity and distance).

If the question asks about metaphor, use the desert and the underground river. If the question is about power dynamics, this poem is your text: the line quoted above, “but you look at me like an emergency” (l. 32), is the kind of specific, memorable detail that examiners notice in essays. If the question asks about Rich’s political engagement, show how she refuses to separate the personal from the political: the bombs and the failing relationship are inseparable in this poem.

For a PCLM paragraph, try: Point (Rich uses the nuclear desert as an extended metaphor for a relationship damaged by power imbalance), Context (in the central section, the speaker explains that everything said up to that point was really an effort to blot out the silence between them), Language (the poem’s closing “as if” construction reveals that the speaker recognises her partner is pretending the danger is external when really the danger is internal to the relationship), My Response (this is painfully accurate because it shows how someone who refuses vulnerability can weaponise their detachment, making you feel helpless precisely when you need support).

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