The Influence of the Erotic-Mystical Images of Persian Poetry on the Erotic-Political Language of Adrienne Rich This inquiry considers the use of ambiguous or erotic-political images in the verses of the feminist North American poet, Adrienne Rich (1929-2012), in her two poetry collections: Leaflets (1969) and The Will to Change (1971). Rich sustained that writing of women and their bodies releases their energy of unconscious and provides them with a transformative power. At the same time, she strived to use this female language for her political purposes. In fact, she intended to connect her personal to political. As a result, she required a poetical form that could convey this duality. In 1968, through a translation project of the poetry of the Indian poet Ghalib (1797-1869), Rich became familiar with a Persian classical poetical form called ghazal. She believed that the association of images in ghazal provided her with the required tools to express the confusions she was experiencing in both her private and public life. In addition, the ambiguity of the erotic-mystical images in Ghalib’s poetry, inherent to the Islamic tradition of Persian poetry, helped Rich to use the most private images of body and sex to speak of her society and politics. Therefore, this inquiry discusses how Rich used the erotic-mystical duality of images in ghazal to speak simultaneously of women, their bodies and socio-political matters in her own collections of ghazal in English, published under the titles “Ghazals: Homage to Ghalib” in Leaflets and “The Blue Ghazals” in The Will to Change. Islamic mysticism (Sufism) rendered a mystic significance to Persian love poetry (ghazal). The Sufis utilized ghazal for the conveyance of their doctrines. Therefore, ghazal could be interpreted both erotically and mystically. This duality served the union of the carnal with the divine and the body with the soul. In her ghazals, Rich applied this duality to the relation between the carnal and the political in order to speak not only of women but all marginal groups such as the African-Americans and the war-trodden people. She, particularly, employed her female language to speak of the struggles and resistance against war in the countries such as Palestine and Iraq. The overall results of this inquiry suggest that the ambiguity of images in ghazal was influential to the development of an erotic-political language in Rich’s poetry or in her very words to the formation of “a common language”.