Award-winning poet Adrienne Rich '51 returned to her Radcliffe roots yesterday, reading aloud from her latest book of poems as part of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study's inaugural lecture series.

Garden Street's First Church, where the reading was held, overflowed with a predominantly female crowd for the reading.

As Rich read from her book Midnight Salvage: Poems 1995-1998, the renowned poet and feminist captured her audience so completely that loud expulsions of breath could be heard following each set of verses.

This latest of the Radcliffe Institute Inaugural Lectures continued the celebration of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study's founding, following the merger of Harvard and Radcliffe College in October of 1999.

Acting Dean of the Radcliffe Institute Mary Maples Dunn welcomed Rich back to her alma mater and thanked her for letting the Radcliffe Institute be "custodians of her future" by entrusting her manuscripts to the Schlesinger Library.

Praising her for writing "against power, against silence," Dunn stressed Rich's contribution to the inaugural lectures series.

"[The series is] intended to show the breadth and depth of what the Radcliffe Institute can and will do," Dunn said.

Rich was first recognized for her poetry in 1951, when she received the Yale Younger Poets Award. Rich has now published four volumes of non-fiction prose and more than 15 volumes of poetry, and has gone on to accumulate myriad other honors, including a National Book Award, two Guggenheim Fellowships and a MacArthur Prize.

In 1996, she was awarded the Academy of American Poets' Tanning Prize for established mastery in the art of poetry. Her support for feminism has lasted at least as long as her poetic career, and her work is known for its powerful denunciations of gender injustice.

With a wry grin, Rich said that it was "great to be back" at her alma mater, speaking in the hall where she attended her first-year Radcliffe Convocation.

She reflected on her days as a college student, especially a dean who told her the Radcliffe community was no "mean city."

However, Rich criticized Harvard and Radcliffe during her residence here as indeed a "mean city," based on its sex segregation and exclusion of women from certain libraries and seminars.

Rich argued that women continue to be regarded as second-class citizens in society, and she lauded the formation of the Institute as an opportunity to critique the modern all-powerful university and press questions of inequality and poverty.

"It is a truly fitting mission to be a thorn in institutional self-congratulation," she said.

Rich read selections of her recent work, including "Division of Labor," "Rusted Legacy" and two unpublished poems, "Fox" and "Terzerima." Her audience, comprised mainly of non-students, hung on her every word and rose to its feet at the close of the reading.

Students of various universities also attended, and two Boston University graduate students praised Rich's "groundbreaking feminist work" and "unusually vivid imagery."

Stacy D. Truta '01, an admirer of Rich's prose work, said she also appreciated the personal angle of Rich's remarks based on her experience as a Radcliffe student.

"[The lecture was] a wonderful continuation of Radcliffe College's great intellectual tradition," said Peggy T. Lim '01.

The Radcliffe Inaugural Lectures will continue with talks by the first Dean of the Radcliffe Institute Drew Gilpin Faust, Master of Trinity College and Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen, and author Toni Morrison.