On Not Shoplifting Louis Bogan's The Blue Estuaries

536 Words2 Pages

In the poem, On Not Shoplifting Louis Bogan’s The Blue Estuaries, the author, Julia Alvarez conveys the speaker’s discoveries by tone, imagery and details. She uses tone to show us how the speaker feels. Also she uses imagery to show the readers what the speaker sees. At last, she puts detail to let the readers know more about the speaker’s discoveries. In my opinion, the speaker found a poem she was really interested in. so I would say the tone could be for example, curious, it was curious because the speaker was so interested in this poem she just wanted to take it. She didn’t have the money to buy it. But the speaker just put it back on the shelf, “I touched their blank, downy sides, musing, and I put the book back.” Another tone of this poem could be excited. The speaker was excited she found such a great poem she was interested in. “Your book surprised me on the bookstore shelf-…” …show more content…

The imagery Alvarez uses lets the readers actually picture what the speaker is reading. For example, “…swans gliding on a blue book lake; no blurbs by the big boys on back; no sassy, big haired picture to complicate the achievement; no mentors musing over how they had discovered you had it in you before you even know you had it in you.” This sentence is saying this book that she saw surprised her because it was an easy looking book. There wasn’t anything hard or difficult looking on the cover. The speaker is saying it was a simple looking book. Comes to find out the speaker loved the book. “Page after page, your poems were stirring my own poems-words rose, breaking the surface, shattering an old silence.” The speaker kept reading the poem she picked page after page and she got more interested in it after every page she read. The words shattered her

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