Adrienne Rich Flashcards
Storm Warnings - Stanza 1
Glass has been falling all the afternoon - Storm is coming referring to air pressure reading on a barometer
Winds are walking overhead - personification of the storm makes it seem more sinister and ominous
Boughs strain against the sky - cinematic image that captures the violence if the incoming storm
Storm Warnings - Stanza 2
Weather abroad and weather in the heart alike come on regardless of prediction - `Despite our ability to prompt the weather or our own moods, we cannot change them
Storm Warnings - Stanza 3
The wind will rise - succinct description of inevitable adversity
We can only close the shutters - Coping mechanism with the hardship
Storm Warnings - Stanza 4
candles sheathed in glass - Candles like Rich are vulnerable
Insistent whine of weather through the unsealed aperture - Aural imagery sets eerie tone of waiting and solitude
Who lived in troubled regions
Roofwalker - stanza 1
Giants, the roof walker, on a listing deck - The builders are depicted as imposing and larger than life. However regardless of their physical prowess they are vulnerable on listing deck.They are destined to be tomorrows shipwreck
The wave of darkness about to break other heads - metaphor of the new political era
Burning deck
Roofwalker - stanza 2
I feel like them up there, exposed - Rich like construction workers is vulnerable
About to break my neck - Due toffee a dreadful calamity
A life I didn’t choose chose me - She is a victim of circumstance
I’m naked ,ignorant - Vulnerable
Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers - Stanza 1
Tigers prance across the screen - Tigers move with self-assurance and vitality - confident
They do not fear the men beneath the tree - Dauntless and intrepid. They are free
Pace in sleek chivalric certainty - Repeated c and k sound captures the steady and confident rhythm of the tigers’ prance.
Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers - Stanza 2
Aunt Jennifer’s finger fluttering through her wool - onomatopoeia of fluttering captures Aunt Jeniffer’s frailty as well as her flighty disposition
Massive weight of Uncle’s wedding band sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer’s hand - weighed down literally and figuratively by her husband’s wedding band.
Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers - Stanza 3
Ringed with ordeals she was mastered by - Ringed is a double entendre both alluding to her wedding band and the emotional ordeals which wrung her out
The tigers in the panel that she made will go on prancing, proud and unafraid - Despite AJ powerlessness her artwork will endure long after her and will paradoxically empower the otherwise voiceless subaltern
The Uncle Speaks in the Drawing Room - Stanza 1
mob… standing sullen in the square…..with a sullen stare - sibilance captures the hiss of discontent winding its way through the crowd.
At window, balcony and gate - metaphors for the uncle’s privilege as he looks down on the mob both figuratively and literally. His window separates him, the balcony elevates him and the gate shields him
Some have held and figured stones - sign of growing discontent and acrimony
The Uncle Speaks in the Drawing Room - Stanza 2
These are follies that subside - Uncles tone is dismissive and condescending belittles the crowd
Certain frailties of glass - Uncle forced to recognise his relative vulnerability, his window is just a frailty of glass
The Uncle Speaks in the Drawing Room - Stanza 3
None as yet dare lift and arm - violence has not “yet” broken out
Grandsire stood aghast - Idiolect is archaic and antiquated. Appears to be a man out of time
Antique Ruby bowl shivered in a thunder-roll - Rhyme and onomatopoeic verb shivered captures the mounting tension and sense of imminent danger
But the scene recalls a storm
The Uncle Speaks in the Drawing Room - Stanza 4
Let us - issuive injunction and inclusive language
We stand between the dead glass-blowers and murmurings of missile throwers -
Diving into the wreck - Stanza 1,2,3
the body armour of black rubber the absurd flippers - Equipment protects the diver
Cousteau - foreshadowing the cinematic imagery to come
But here alone - this is a solitary journey
There is a ladder, the ladder is always there hanging innocently - symbolic for the path to introspection
I go down - succinct description of Richs journey to the core of self
Blue light the clear atoms of our human air - Image has a cinematic quality as we imagine the poet suspended in the blue canvas of the ocean
I crawl like an insect down here - simile of an insect reminds us of Rich’s and our own fragility and insignificance compared to vast ocean
And there is no one - she is on her own with the discontent of her psych
Diving into the wreck - Stanza 4,5,6,7
First the air is blue and then it is bluer and then green and then black - cinematic quality of narration is evident
The sea is not a question of power - Sea is not subject to power-dynamics like society
