Aunt Jennifer's Tigers

The poem opens with the introduction of the tigers by an unnamed third-person speaker who observes the scene. As the poem’s title and first line imply, these tigers belong to a character named Aunt Jennifer. This is an unusual image because people rarely own or have access to animals as wild and dangerous tigers. These tigers also “prance across a screen” (Line 1), so the reader quickly learns that the tigers are synthetic; and, by the poem’s second line, the narrative takes on a quietly humorous tone as the speaker terms the tigers “denizens” (Line 2). Though the tigers move freely, their movements are springy and ostentatious unlike the prowling gait of actual tigers. Even their colors are exaggerated jewel tones like the yellow-orange of topaz: “[b]right topaz denizens of a world of green” (Line 2). In this green world—created particularly for them—the tigers are free from the concerns of real tigers in the wild. As the speaker observes these things, the poem’s tone is characterized by lighthearted curiosity and the joyfully willing suspension of disbelief.

The first stanza, with all its brightness, shows this “world of green” (Line 2) as almost Edenic.