"For Jennifer, 6, on the Teton" is included in Richard Hugo's 1975 collection, What Thou Lovest Well, Remains American, which was nominated for the National Book Award and reprinted in Making Certain It Goes On: The Collected Poems of Richard Hugo (1983). Hugo often wrote poems to lovers, students, and sometimes children of friends and lovers, and this is one of the latter. Hugo addresses the child, Jennifer, throughout the poem, making comparisons between her life and the Teton River, which inspired the poem. Historically, poets have used the river as a symbol of time, life, and change, and Hugo draws on this tradition in the poem. The form of the poem, though not a letter, has much in common with the poems in Hugo's next collection, 31 Letters and 13 Dreams (1977), many of which he addresses to friends and acquaintances.

In five stanzas, the speaker, acting as sage, makes observations about childhood, nature, ageing, language, and death, providing the child with an idea of what life has in store for her. Hugo's language in the poem, like the language of one of his primary literary influences, Wallace Stevens, is highly elliptical. This means he leaves much unsaid, and his comparisons can be difficult to grasp upon first reading. However, as with good poems that stand the test of time, Hugo's poem offers something new upon each rereading.