In 1956, she began to date her poetry, which became laced with her trademark sexual politics and issues of oppression and freedom. After the 1970 death of her husband, Rich vocalized herself as an outspoken lesbian feminist, seeking to include the lesbian experience into woman's' scholarship. She remains today a figurehead for gay and lesbian rights, reproductive freedom and for the progressive Jewish movement.

Rich's return to Radcliffe after 50 years proved to be a celebration of both poetry and the Radcliffe Institution itself. Dean Dunn commented that Radcliffe would now serve as keepers of Rich's legacy, as her collected papers are archived at the Radcliffe Institute's Schlesinger library on the History of Women in America.

The reading itself ranged from older poems like "Divisions of Labor" (which focuses on women in the back rows of politics) to works from her most recent publication, Midnight Salvage, and concluded with the poet sharing two new poems with the audience. Empathy for the troubles of the persecuted shone through the readings from Dark Fields of the Republic, as Rich's intimate voice, laden with strong pauses, directly addressed "the reader who still listens" to the politics of poetry. Shifting to works from Midnight Salvage, Rich read to rows of eyelids; listeners absorbed her words with eyes closed as she shared some of the underlying meanings of her new text.

Her latest work derives its title from the symbolic figure of Orion, whose presence frames the book's namesake poem, "Midnight Salvage." The eight-section poems run through pieces of Rich's past, focusing particularly on a college life that, according to Rich, was as "a cemetery is controlled." The morbid metaphor originates in this piece, which makes backhanded allusions to John Keats and Antonio Gramsci, who are buried in the same cemetery in Rome. Through Rich's instinctive search for the figure of Orion, listeners and readers voyage with the poet through a life of activism, looking through "history's bloodshot eyes" across "the pathetic erections of soothsayers," before establishing Rich as a poet and activist "practiced in life," who scans the fog for her midnight salvage.

One could argue that Rich's poetry was designed to be read aloud; double colons mark heavy caesuras in her work, rendering it a series of hypnotizing lines and pauses. Her riveting reading gives poem like "Seven Skins" (which focuses on dating a paraplegic in 1952) a cryptic tone as she reflects on the university and its change during the postwar years.

Rich's reading culminated with her sharing of two new works with the audience, coupled by an expletive prelude to her artistry. Modeled after the classic Italian form of tertza rhima (3-line triplets with elaborate end-rhymes), one of Rich's new works pays homage to Dante's Divine Comedy, which embodies this structure. Although it lacks end-rhymes, Rich's poem puts a twist on Dante's theme of the novice and the guide, ultimately celebrating what Rich terms "the death of history." She concludes that one's self is both novice and guide, as the poem's disembodied voice questions: "Was that youth? That clear sapphire on snow?"

Despite Rich's apparent discontent with the past, her work lauds the power of both history and words; words that merited a resounding standing ovation from the crowd gathered in Cambridge's Congregational Church. With such a warm embrace from her alma mater, Rich reiterated that Radcliffe has not, in fact, melted into Harvard, but stands as its own "mysterious" structure. In the poet's eyes, the Radcliffe Institute occupies a critical stance towards Harvard, serving as critique of modern elite universities and a "thorn in the flesh of institutional self-congratulation." The reading itself was another brick in the pathway of Radcliffe's future endeavors, and proves the dynamic nature of the Lecture Series.