Today's Poems

Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers

                  By Adrienne Rich

Aunt Jennifer's tigers prance across a screen,

Bright topaz denizens of a world of green.

They do not fear the men beneath the tree;

They pace in sleek chivalric certainty.

Aunt Jennifer's finger fluttering through her wool

Find even the ivory needle hard to pull.

The massive weight of Uncle's wedding band

Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer's hand.

When Aunt is dead, her terrified hands will lie

Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by.

The tigers in the panel that she made

Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid.

1. What type of formal qualities do you find in this poem?

2. Who is contrasted in this poem? What are the effects of those contrasts?

3. What are the main images in this poem?

4. How are some words that have powerful connotations, and what are those connotations? What tone do those words present?

5. What larger themes does the poem cover? (What type of bookshelves would you find this poem on?)

Those Winter Sundays

                  By Robert Hayden

Sundays too my father got up early

and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,

then with cracked hands that ached

from labor in the weekday weather made

banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.

When the rooms were warm, he’d call,

and slowly I would rise and dress,

fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,

who had driven out the cold

and polished my good shoes as well.

What did I know, what did I know

of love’s austere and lonely offices?

1. What type of formal qualities do you find in this poem—including syntax as a gesture?

2. Who is contrasted in this poem? What are the effects of those contrasts?

3. What are the main images in this poem?

4. How are some words that have powerful connotations, and what are those connotations? What tone do those words present?

5. What larger themes does the poem cover? (What type of bookshelves would you find this poem on?)