This poem has a strong voice running through it. How would you describe the speaker’s mood?
This poem has a calm voice going through it. This whole poem is based on stoping and smelling the roses, it shows us how the middle things in life are the things that can make us happy. The mood is relaxed and carefree, it gives you a bittersweet feeling and makes you want to appreciate things in your life more.
Look at some of the more unexpected things the speaker in the poem finds beautiful, like leaves in the gutter or salt stains on shoes. Why are these details more interesting than a more obvious example of beauty, like flowers, would be? These are more unexpected and interesting because noticing flowers is an everyday thing and you will always see the beauty in it because of how our society is built, but when it comes to salt stains you never really think of it. When he talks about salt stains on shoes and leaves in the gutter, those are both two things that happen almost everyday but we never take time to talk about it and appreciate it.
What is the effect of the poet’s use of similes that offer more than one comparison of an image, such as “the sky, lit up like a question or / an applause meter” or “raindrops / like jewels or glass or those bright beads / girls put between the letters of the / bracelets that spell out their beautiful names”? How does this technique add to the overall feeling of the poem? The poet had many ways of speaking to the readers trying to make them remember things from the past or bring up things that we normally don’t say. Overall I believe this poem was beautifully written and makes the readers create a connection with the poem.
What actually happens in this poem? What do you know about the speaker’s life? In the poem the speaker is going outside and appreciating his day to day life, looking at all the things to appreciate.