Page 2 - LN3-MODULE

Summary

The “I,” the voice of the speaker of Adrienne Rich’s poem, “The Trees,” is a voice with a body
engaged in activities and sensing intrusions that are not organic to the conventions of a
nature poem. This is, in fact, an (un)natural poem that narrates the struggle of a population
of trees to escape the confines of a greenhouse. In evoking the trees’ “strain,” the poem
demonstrates the unsuitability of language itself as a greenhouse or container of nature.
The speaker is a witness to the trees’ exodus, but distances herself from participating in the
making of something out of the spectacle. She “sit[s]” and “write [s]” but not poems, “long
letters,” in which she “scarcely mention[s] the departure / of the forest.” Even though the
speaker addresses an audience, her own “head is full of whispers”—she’s an audience as
well. We, however, the audience to the poem, are compelled by the command: “Listen.”
The speaker reaches across the barrier between poem and audience, a transaction that
occurs on a page, and says: Listen, you.
Adrienne Rich articulates her consciousness of the many levels of inner and outer and the
blurring of the boundaries between them. The trees, “long-cramped… under the roof” are
trying to get out while the speaker remains in the space the trees long to escape. An open
door makes the “night” and the “whole moon” and the “sky” available to the speaker; at the
same time, through this door “the smell of leaves… / still reaches” back in. The speaker’s
“head” is another interior, implicitly entered by “whispers.”
The poetess is especially intrigued by her image of the trees “like newly discharged patients /
half-dazed”. In addition, the speaker’s sense of her head “full of whispers,” occurring one
verse later, links to these “discharged patients.” They’re patients of a mental hospital.
The Trees Summary
The poet talks about trees symbolically. They refer to women who have been healed and
are ready to move out of their houses to fulfil their primary purpose - to renew the forest of
mankind. As women have remained indoors, the forest has become empty, the birds and
insects rendered shelter less. The Sun’s rays do not have the tree trucks and leaves to fall
upon and thus, reach the earth. She says that the forest will be full of trees the next
morning. The roots of the trees are working hard to separate from the floor of the veranda
where they have remained fixed. The leaves and branches are moving towards the glass
windows. They are desperate to move out just like a newly discharged patient who has not
recovered completely, moves to the exit door of the hospital in a hurry. The poet is sitting in
her house with the doors of the veranda open. She is writing letters but does not mention
this movement of the trees. It is night time, the sky is clear and a bright moon is visible. She
can smell the leaves and lichen which seem to be calling out desperately. She hears the glass
of the window pane breaking. The trees are moving out and the fast blowing wind embraces
them. As the trees have reached the forest, the tall and strong oak tree overshadows the
moon and it seems that the moon has been broken into several pieces.