Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

In "What Kind of Times Are These," Adrienne Cecile Rich crafts a haunting and introspective narrative that engages with the socio-political landscape, embedding the personal within the collective experience. The setting of the poem-a stretch of land "between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill"-is presented as a locus of historical and contemporary tension. In these woods, the ghosts of history are palpable, evoking "the old revolutionary road" and a "meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted."

Rich complicates the scene further by admitting she's "walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread." This introduces an eerie paradox: a landscape that is both innocuous and fraught, embodying the interplay of everyday life and underlying societal fears. With a direct challenge to the reader, Rich asserts, "this isn't a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here." This line serves multiple purposes: it dismisses the idea that societal dread and persecution are issues relegated to other countries and time periods, and it confronts the reader with the immediacy of the issues at hand. It urges us to grapple with "our country moving closer to its own truth and dread," and our complicity in "its own ways of making people disappear."

Rich continues with an ominous refusal: "I won't tell you where the place is." This denial is powerful, emphasizing the potential for exploitation in the name of commercialism or political gain, recognizing "who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear." Here, Rich seems to allude to not just the physical space she's describing, but also the memory and history it holds. To make the place "disappear" would be to erase those histories, to silence the voices of the "persecuted" that once sought sanctuary there.

The closing lines offer a poignant rationale for the poem's existence, acknowledging the dilemma of communicating in "times like these," when dialogue can be treacherous or even futile. "Because you still listen," Rich offers, highlighting the urgency of maintaining channels of communication, even when it feels almost fruitless. The poem concludes with a striking line: "it's necessary / to talk about trees." On the surface, it suggests that sometimes we discuss the seemingly mundane or non-threatening in order to broach more perilous topics. But it's also an urgent reminder that in a time of peril, speaking of simple, concrete things like trees can act as a grounding force, a shared touchstone that might allow us to navigate the more treacherous landscapes of our collective reality.

Rich's poem stands as an inquiry into the nature of our times-an era that blurs the lines between personal fear and collective dread, between historical wounds and present dangers. It provokes us to consider how we navigate a world that is at once beautiful and menacing, to question what we hold sacred, and to confront the dangers of silence and erasure. Most importantly, it asks us to listen-to the poem, to each other, and to the subtle, insistent narratives of the landscapes we inhabit

Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!

Other Poems of Interest...