Julia Alvarez’s poem On Not Stealing Louise Bogan’s The Blue Estuaries conveys the speaker’s discoveries—the book, her love for and confidence in reading poetry and her girl’s voice--as surprising and serendipitous. This is conveyed through the use of imagery, figurative language and selection of detail. Imagery is used in the poem to convey the speaker’s discoveries: her love for and confidence in reading poetry. The poem begins with the speaker stumbling upon the book, which she says surprised her. The speaker goes in depth to describe the book, noting its “swans gliding on a blueback lake… posed on a placid lake, your name blurred underwater sinking to the bottom.” The use of imagery here is employed to demonstrate how quickly the speaker’s
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At the start, when the speaker first notices the book, she notes that there are “no blurbs by the big boys on back; no sassy, big-haired picture to complicate the achievement,” referring to the descriptions of critics praising the book and the photo of the author typically appearing on books. These two lines were added to elucidate that books with these features may have failed to attract her or speak to her; as the poem progresses, it is revealed that she was also dissuaded by these other books because English is not her native tongue, based on the line “my coming late into this foreign alphabet”. In the preceding line, the speaker apprises the audience that “For a moment I lost my doubts, / my girl’s voice…” In essence, the detail was selected to convey the impact that reading The Blue Estuaries had on her: it helped her lose her doubts in her confidence in reading and discover her girl’s voice, which motivated her to read and write poetry as she read, as stated in line 37. Perhaps the most crucial detail in the poem is in line 48 and 49: “a mirror reflecting back / someone I was becoming”. The line reveals that the book has had such a monumental effect on her, having helped her discover who she was becoming: someone who loved poetry, someone who loved reading and someone who found her voice and confidence for reading and writing
At the start, when the speaker first notices the book, she notes that there are “no blurbs by the big boys on back; no sassy, big-haired picture to complicate the achievement,” referring to the descriptions of critics praising the book and the photo of the author typically appearing on books. These two lines were added to elucidate that books with these features may have failed to attract her or speak to her; as the poem progresses, it is revealed that she was also dissuaded by these other books because English is not her native tongue, based on the line “my coming late into this foreign alphabet”. In the preceding line, the speaker apprises the audience that “For a moment I lost my doubts, / my girl’s voice…” In essence, the detail was selected to convey the impact that reading The Blue Estuaries had on her: it helped her lose her doubts in her confidence in reading and discover her girl’s voice, which motivated her to read and write poetry as she read, as stated in line 37. Perhaps the most crucial detail in the poem is in line 48 and 49: “a mirror reflecting back / someone I was becoming”. The line reveals that the book has had such a monumental effect on her, having helped her discover who she was becoming: someone who loved poetry, someone who loved reading and someone who found her voice and confidence for reading and writing