"What Kind of Times Are These" alludes to the 1939 poem "To Those Who Follow in Our Wake," written by the German poet Berthold Brecht at the beginning of World War II. At one point, the speaker of Brecht's poem says:
What times are these, in which
A conversation about trees is almost a crime
For in doing so we maintain our silence about so much wrongdoing!
Brecht uses "trees" to represent the beauty and seclusion of nature, which has so often moved poets to write. But Brecht thought it was irresponsible—"almost a crime"—to write about nature when all over his country people were being violently persecuted by the Nazi regime. As far as Brecht was concerned, artists have a responsibility to address what is happening in the world around them.
Rich's poem announces itself as being in conversation with Brecht's through the title, though Rich doesn't make her argument immediately apparent. Instead, "What Kind of Times Are These" opens with a description of "a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill / and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows."
Rich's poem thus nods to the "trees" Brecht spoke of, but the trees in Rich's poem aren't exactly removed from what's going on in the world at large. They're part of the setting and, in fact, seem to serve as a kind of cover for some sort of operation: the speaker's mention of an "old revolutionary road" that disappears into the darkness of the woods suggests that these woods were once a haven for revolutionaries, people organizing at a "meeting-house" in order to fight against oppression. Note, too, the use of alliteration in these lines: the /t/ sounds in "two stands of trees," /gr/ sounds in "grass grows," and /r/ sounds in "revolutionary road" creates musicality and emphasis, highlighting the importance of this setting. Right away, then, the speaker is talking about both trees and revolution; poetry, the image might imply, always exists in conversation with its surroundings.
The speaker goes on to say that the "place" they're describing was "abandoned." The "meeting-house" where revolutionaries once met is now empty; both the "road" and the "persecuted" have vanished into the "shadows." Their disappearance implies that their revolution failed. It isn't clear whether the revolutionaries found somewhere else to meet or if they were caught by those who wanted to squash their efforts. In any case, there's a sense of incompletion; it seems this revolution didn't achieve what it set out to achieve.
Note the repetition of the word "shadows" at the ends of lines 2 and 4. This repetition makes this place seem more sinister and threatening; it's a world surrounded by darkness, which perhaps also represents how little the speaker actually knows about what happened. The speaker doesn't know how far the road extends into the woods, nor do they know precisely what became of the people who met here. Their ignorance suggests that those in power were successful in snuffing out the revolution. That these people "disappeared into those shadows" implies that they were effectively silenced—hence the speaker's ignorance of their fate.
Finally, this stanza establishes the poem's form: "What Kind of Times Are These" is made up of four quatrains written in free verse, creating a conversational, direct, and intimate tone. Enjambments across the first few lines of the poem also create momentum, building a sense of urgency right from the poem's start.