Today

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2000

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Background

Physical Context

Though it does not explicitly identify a single place, “Today” paints a strong domestic image of a house and a garden. The overall effect is a strong sense of home, safety, and predictability. Though the safety and predictability are at times tenuous given the alarming images of violence to inanimate objects, the overarching impression is that the speaker is at home and that the beauty of the spring day has rejuvenated their sense of joy in their surroundings, which is a relief after being stuck there through the winter. To be reminded that the spring follows the winter and that the snow-covered ground outside the windows will once again erupt into the warmth and color of a garden filled with peonies sends the speaker into fits of barely-controllable pleasure. This grounding in place of the poem helps convey its meaning since the reader can understand how a favorable change in monotonous surroundings would be welcome indeed. It also helps to highlight the irony and surprise Collins employs in the poem by setting a simple and familiar scene within which these flashes of small aggressions become exaggerated to seem like the behavior of a wild person.

Situational Context

Though Collins’s poetry has been both lauded and criticized for its easily accessible language, he has stated in interviews and lectures that he feels poetry is meant to push the reader into a place they did not expect to end up at the beginning of the poem. This unexpected journey in a poem can be disorienting, and the journey we take through what appears on the surface to be a lovely spring day is a bit disorienting in its sudden and unexpected twists of irony and juxtaposition. On a beautiful spring day, we expect to see the blossoming peonies and the garden paths. However, the splashes of violent gestures and the appearance of hard-edged tools is disorienting in the same way a jump scare in a horror movie is disorienting. Collins hypnotizes the reader with lilting lines of soft words and gentle images, and then pounces on them with the sudden appearance of a hammer and the violence of ripping doors off cages or smashing glass globes. This keeps the reader on their toes and keeps them engaged in a poem that in any other situation might be a bit dull. Collins is able to take something mundane that happens predictably for almost everyone a few times every year and turn it on its head by introducing the ecstatic fury that comes from not being able to fully express the emotions the scene conjures.