For this assignment, read the following poem. As you do so, think of, and take into account one or multiple social issues.
Write an in depth analysis of the poem; throughout your response, you should consider the poem’s message and its context, how it attempts to impact social thought, and make sure to reference specific text evidence in your writing as well.
Attempt to explain/elucidate one or multiple social issues the author talks about in this poem. Make sure the paper is balanced and that ideas flow smoothly. Although a portion of this assignment is to immerse yourself in social issues, it must be accompanied by strong, complex, and impressive poetry analysis.
What Kind of Times Are These
BY ADRIENNE RICH
There’s a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill
and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows
near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted
who disappeared into those shadows.
I’ve walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don’t be fooled
this isn’t a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,
our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,
its own ways of making people disappear.
I won’t tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods
meeting the unmarked strip of light
ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:
I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.
And I won’t tell you where it is, so why do I tell you
anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these
to have you listen at all, it’s necessary
to talk about trees.
Adrienne Rich, “What Kind of Times are These” from Collected Poems: 1950-2012. Copyright 2016 by The Adrienne Rich Literary Trust. Copyright 1995 Adrienne Rich. Reprinted by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc..
Source: Dark Fields of the Republic: Poems 1991-1995 (W. W. Norton and Company Inc., 1995)
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