Family Album By Diane Thiel

I like old photographs of relatives

in black and white, their faces set like stone.

They knew this was serious business.

My favorite album is the one that's filled

with people none of us can even name.

I find the recent ones more difficult.

I wonder, now, if anyone remembers

how fiercely I refused even to stand

beside him for this picture — how I shrank

back from his hand and found the other side.

Forever now, for future family,

we will be framed like this, although no one

will wonder at the way we are arranged.

No one will ever wonder, since we'll be

forever smiling there — our mouths all teeth

Dare to analyse it: 

The persona seems to have a bad relationship with a male family member of hers, probably her father. The evidence is: “how fiercely I refused even to stand

beside him for this picture — how I shrank

back from his hand and found the other side.” This tells me that she is not willing to stand beside that member of the family to take the photograph. The adjective “fiercely” tells me that there she has a violent objection standing beside the member of her family, she got out of his hand and went to stand at the other side. Her action tells me that she does not like this member of the family, and doesn’t even want to stand beside him for a picture. Hence, I imply that she has a bad relationship with this member of the family that she would not even take a picture with him.

In the poem, there are two different effects. In the first stanza, the mood seems to be very neutral, with the persona talking about family albums. But as the poem graduates to stanza two and three, the mood is down and emotional, with the persona recalling about a photo taking experience with a member of a family and with the persona knowing that no one would know what happened that year in the photograph other than her.