Dissing the Patriarchy
Adrienne Rich was as famous for her political activism as she was for her poetry. Her best poems, such as "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers," manage to be both beautiful poems and political acts in and of themselves. Rich's work is not filled with rosy marriages. Instead, she writes about the hierarchies (or levels of power) than exist in a patriarchal (male-dominated) society, and how those hierarchies affect us all. "Aunt Jennifer's Tigers," and a lot of other Rich poems, criticizes our political structure and dares us to imagine a world where tigers prance—and where men and women have equal opportunities and life experiences.