I am looking for a poem that relates to the book/play The Glass Menagerie. Or even a poem relating to the theme- impossibility of escape. Thanks for your help.

I never hear the word "escape" (77)

I never hear the word "escape"
Without a quicker blood,
A sudden expectation
A flying attitude!

I never hear of prisons broad
By soldiers battered down,
But I tug childish at my bars
Only to fail again!

Emily Dickinson


p.s. have you seen the 1987 movie version of Glass Menagerie with Joanne Woodward and the brilliant John Malkovich? I recommend it!

r

Edwin Muir: The Combat
Phliip Larkin: Blocked.
Toads.
Toads Revisited

What an interesting question!!!

AS YOU MAY KNOW, in the original play script there are instructions for showing slides between scenes, giving each one a "legend" or epigraph. (In that sense, the play was written with a very "television" feeling to it.)

One study guide points out:

===The legend which preceded [the dinner scene] reads "Ou sont les neiges," a phrase from an old French poem which asks, "Where are the snows of yesteryear?" ===

The "old French poem" is by François Villon, written c. 1461. You can read it in French at [ [www.bartleby.com] ] and in one English at [ [www.projetbrassens.eclipse.co.uk] ].

Possibly there are other pre-scene "legends" that will lead you to appropriate poems.

Here's a poem written by someone after reading (or seeing?) the play:

[www.schuminweb.com];