On Not Shoplifting Louise Bogan's The Blue Estuaries

People become inspired from all sorts of unique things from a play or a quote to a book of poems. Julia Alvarez’s “On Not Shoplifting Louise Bogan’s The Blue Estuaries” conveys the speaker’s discoveries and the passion and inspiration they created through the use of tone, imagery, similes, and alliteration.

In the first and second stanzas, the speaker appears captivated by the discovery of a new genre and a new author. When the speaker discovers the poetry section amongst an assortment of meaningless gossip magazines and “reference tomes” they become enlightened and drawn to them. The line “no blurbs by the big boys on back” (line 3), utilizes alliteration to reveal the differences between what she is used to reading and the new book she had

The speaker illustrates her poor state and questions whether or not to shoplift the book to keep the work that has inspired her to unimaginable measures. This feeling is conveyed through the writing “I had no money, no one was looking./ The swan posed on the cover,/ their question-mark necks arced/ over the dark waters./ I was asking them what to do” (lines 40-44). This element of confusion strengthens the tone of passion and reveals how deeply the book has affected her. The moral battle the speaker goes through depicts the strong, positive, inspired feeling they wanted to hold on to; to “own [that] moment” (line38). Ultimately, the speaker replaced the novel which portrays her discovery of who she was and who she was capable of being. The simile: “I held the book closed before me/ as if it were something else,/ a mirror reflecting back/ someone I was becoming” (lines 46-49) convey’s her discovery of herself and the her will power to become a more disciplined individual. It also illustrates the strength she has found from the discovery of this book and the passion it