These poems explore familial relationships. Specifically those with an individual’s aunt. They could be told from the perspective of a niece, nephew, or someone who has a non-biological relationship with a woman they consider their aunt.
Although there are few commonly read poems that touch on this subject, there are several written in different genres and styles that convey the love that can be shared (or the love that’s missing) in aunt/niece/nephew relationships.
Many of these poems are loving and explore bonding moments where two people come to know one another better. But, others are more complicated and depict challenges in family dynamics that many readers are likely to feel connected to.
‘Presents from My Aunts in Pakistan’ navigates a girl’s bicultural identity, reflecting on gifts from Pakistan that evoke longing.
They sent me a salwar kameez
peacock-blue,
and another
glistening like an orange split open,
Marilyn Nelson’s ‘The Ballad of Aunt Geneva’ is about a Black woman’s life, relationships, work, and the rumors about her character.
Geneva was a wild one
Geneva was a tart.
Geneva met a blue-eyed boy
And gave away her heart.
‘Aunt Helen’ presents a strange elegy that, in a detached tone, paints the world’s indifference instead of lamenting death.
Miss Helen Slingsby was my maiden aunt,
And lived in a small house near a fashionable square
Cared for by servants to the number of four.
Now when she died there was silence in heaven
Adrienne Rich’s ‘Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers’ critiques the oppression of women in marriages using images of sewn tigers.
Aunt Jennifer's tigers prance across a screen,
Bright topaz denizens of a world of green.
They do not fear the men beneath the tree;
They pace in sleek chivalric certainty.
‘Out to Old Aunt Mary’s’ by James Whitcomb Riley juxtaposes memories of carefree youth with the passage of time, underlying the lasting significance of the memories
Wasn't it pleasant, O brother mine,
In those old days of the lost sunshine
Of youth—when the Saturday's chores were through,
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