Study of History: Addressing the Queer Body

In her poem Study of History, Adrienne Rich first writes: “The mind of a river / as it might be you”. Rich writes this poem entirely in the second person, making the reader wonder whether she is addressing the entire queer community or a singular queer individual.
It is important to first notice Rich’s metaphor. Not only does she choose to write about water; she chooses to write about a body of water, a river in particular. This is crucial because body is a word used to represent either a collective community or a particular individual. Words and terms such as “upstream”, “below the water line”, and “which of your channels diverted” imply that this body is complex, fluid and diverse. This could represent vast diversity within the queer community, but could also be interpreted as the fluid complexity of one’s sexuality/gender.
The last line of the first stanza and the entire second stanza describe external factors that destroy the river. When Rich writes of “Lying in the dark, to think of you / and your harsh traffic / gulls pecking at your rubbish… pleasure cruisers wiltlessy careening you”, it is made clear that this river has been exploited; it is polluted and decaying. This forces the reader to not only recognize society’s general impact on the queer community, but also recognize that societal norms restrict/slow down an individual’s queer identity. Use of gerunds in the first and second stanza not only imply that this is the river’s current state, but a continuous state that will likely flow into the future.
Rich also indicates that past trauma further impacts the river’s decrepit state. The third stanza focuses more on “what was done to you upstream” (Rich). When inquiring about the past Rich asks the reader “what powers trepanned”. After a quick google search, I found out that trepanning (now very illegal) was a surgery much like a lobotomy, but instead of an ice pick through the eye socket doctors used a drill entering through the temple. Separating essential nerve endings in the frontal lobe from the rest of the brain, doctors believed this surgery would guide queer people back to an acceptable sexuality. As a community, Rich could be referring to the literal surgery, therefore reflecting on a collective, historical trauma many queer bodies experienced. Yet also, her use of trepanning could refer to the restrictive gender/sexuality norms that were metaphorically “drilled into our heads” from a young age. Homophobic ideology becomes so ingrained into our society that queer bodies are likely to suffer from internalized homophobia.
Therefore, Study of History reflects on a universal queer history, as the river represents histories shaping the collective and individual queer body.