Tiger in the Menagerie by Emma Jones

Tiger in the Menagerie by Emma Jones

No one could say how the tiger got into the menagerie.
It was too flash, too blue, 
too much like the painting of a tiger.

At night the bars of the cage and the stripes of the tiger
looked into each other so long
that when it was time for those eyes to rock shut

the bars were the lashes of the stripes
the stripes were the lashes of the bars

and they walked together in their dreams so long
through the long colonnade 
that shed its fretwork to the Indian main

that when the sun rose they'd gone and the tiger was 
one clear orange eye that walked into the menagerie.

No one could say how the tiger got out in the menagerie.
It was too bright, too bare.
If the menagerie could, it would say 'tiger'.

If the aviary could, it would lock its door.
Its heart began to beat in rows of rising birds 
when the tiger came inside to wait.

Poem Analysis:

This poem by Emma Jones, has 7 short stanzas which vary between 2-3 lines each with no rhymes. Various words have been used creatively my Emma in order to give a descriptive display of the tiger’s nature.

In line 2, imagery has been used to emphasize that a tiger is too fast and unnoticeable to be caught “too flash, too blue”. The use of simile in “too much like a painting of a tiger”, shows that it is too unrealistic. The appearance of the tiger is described in the line “too bright, too bare” with the use of alliteration. “The bars were the lashes of the stripes the stripes were the lashes of the bars” is where intense imagery is used to describe how incredibly uncomfortable and tight the cage was for the tiger that the bar of the cage where leaving permanent marks like his stripes. The fact that the animals of the menagerie were terrified of the tiger is shown in the line “If the menagerie could, it would say ‘tiger’”. 

Research Content: 

Emma Jones was born in Sydney and educated at Universities of Sydney and Cambridge. On 2006, Jacob Polley had organized a small gathering for writers and poets of Cambridge University, and Emma’s unpublished poem had left him speechless. Later on, Polley had emailed her in order to ask for more of her work and forwarded them to Matthew Hollis and had it published, making her the second Australian after Geoffery Lehmann, way back in 1994. Plus, she was the only debut writer that year.

Her very first book, name “The Striped World”, had won the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award as well as the Felix Prize. In 2009-10 she was the poet in residence at Wordsworth Trust.

Right now she lives in a cottage, the home of William Wordsworth. There she concentrates on her writing peacefully.