Tenderness
“Tenderness” The poem “Tenderness” by Stephen Dunn describes a love affair between a young man and an older woman that work together. ... In “Tenderness,” Dunn illustrates how love and tenderness bring about both the woman’s change in her view of men and the man’s transformation from a naïve young man to a mature and compassionate individual. At the beginning of the poem, Dunn writes, “all she knew of tenderness / was how much she wanted it, and all / I knew / were back seats and a night or two / in a sleeping bag in the furtive dark” (9-13). ... The woman, in turn, teaches the man about tenderness. It is shown that the man is beginning to realize what tenderness is when he says that “you must have experienced the absence of it / to know what silk and deep balm / it is / when at last it comes” (27-30).