National Book Award-winning poet Adrienne Rich has passed away. She was 82 years old. Follow this Poetry Foundation link to read poems by the great author.

Over her long career, Rich (pictured, via Robert Giard) earned the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award and a MacArthur genius grant. Maud Newton pointed us toward Rich’s poem, “For the Dead.” An excerpt:

I have always wondered about the left-over
energy, the way water goes rushing down a hill
long after the rains have stopped

or the fire you want to go to bed from
but cannot leave, burning-down but not burnt-down
the red coals more extreme, more curious
in their flashing and dying
than you wish they were
sitting long after midnight