1. This poem has a strong voice running through it. How would you describe the speaker’s mood?
   

   This poem brings out the speaker’s satirical mood with a sense of melancholy while pursuing the idea of losing the authenticity of beauty.

2. 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 details take the reader by surprise, introduce them to the beauty they have never seen before. Consequently, the excitement rises inside the readers as they continue exploring the new beauty lies within familiar surroundings.

3. 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 brights 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’s use of similes that offer more than one comparison of an image narrows down the overlapping area of those images, creates a more accurate description which leads the readers closer to the point that the poet wants to express.

4. What actually happens in this poem? What do you know about the speaker’s life?
   

   -He was supposed to have a meet-up with a friend. However, his friend suddenly cancelled, so he had the evening to himself. When he went out to buy something for dinner, the surroundings filled him with inspiration write this poem.

   -Kevin Connolly is a Canadian poet, freelance editor and critic born in the US in the 60s but grew up in Ontario. He incorporates strategies and technique of language poetry into his poems.

5. The poem follows the speaker moving through space (down the street, into the grocery store, then back outside looking at the sky) and through the speaker’s associative thought of patterns (jumping from thinking of the sky to thinking of the name Skye; from thinking of the name Miranda to thinking of the word verandah). Write a poem in which you try to capture the way your own mind makes connections between seemingly unrelated things and try to maintain a consistent mood throughout.

The rain – still pouring- gets stronger

after each droplet, though it’s been three

on an ordinary summer night.

 

The storm – still raging with thunder-

strives westward, as if it has carefully planned

that its disappearance will start the dawn.

 

The burnt trees struck by Thor

smell like a burnt cake of my aunt,

such a terrible smell

that my father had to splash

tons of water all over the place.

At last, it seemed to go away

but then it came back

just to ruin the day.

 

Or should I say the night?

Instead of a pink bakery full of cakes and candy

near a peaceful lake with white swans,

the nightmare built a haunted house

in the middle of a jungle full of snakes and swamps.

 

The nightmare ended with anxiety,

like the night, three months ago, when

all my classmates became ghost hunters,

like the first time, I was home alone.

The loneliness suddenly returns

with the first ray of the sun on the horizon.

Why do all these memories of home

all of the sudden just pop up in my head?

 

Well, I guess,

It’s time to finally

go home and say

Hello.