The Woman at the Washington Zoo (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Randall Jarrell
- First Published: 1960
- Type of Work: Dramatic monologue
- Genres: Poetry, Dramatic monologue
The Poem
Randall Jarrell’s “The Woman at the Washington Zoo” is a free-verse monologue of thirty lines that reveals the alienation and frustration of an isolated speaker. Indeed, since the “woman” is so detached, the words of the poem are no doubt simply thought rather than spoken aloud. Composed when Jarrell worked in Washington, D.C., as poetry consultant for the Library of Congress, the poem is set at the national zoo in Rock Creek Park.
The female speaker is an anonymous clerk in the massive, impersonal federal bureaucracy. In an essay about how he...
[The entire page is 1408 words long]
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