Adrienne Rich’s Dialogue looks at an interaction between Rich and another woman. The poem starts with some imagery of the woman sitting during their long conversation, a shift in the poem occurs when the narrator gets up to make a cup of tea. This shift is mostly seen at the end of the first stanza and carries through to the end of the poem. Rich utilizes enjambment as well as certain punctuation within the lines in order to create pauses and alter the flow of the poem. Rich also uses parentheses in order to show the narrators thoughts about what the woman had to say. The words that are said are all in italics, starting in the first stanza and all of the second stanza.
The second stanza is full of “I” and question words. She is talking about what she had done in her past and how it made her feel. This retrospective conversation is vague but it can be inferred that she is talking about her feelings or lack thereof for someone. She is confronting her past and trying to make some sense of it, even if there isn’t a strong resolution that comes out of it. These lines come across as an internal dialogue, but could also be words shared from the woman. The ambiguity of this poem is something that makes it so striking and engaging.