MIST is a great strategy to analyze a poem, because with it, you will be scrutinizing the poem with the mood, imagery, structure, and tension of it. One of the most important parts of MIST in my opinion would be the mood. When one starts reading a poem, right away, we can tell whether it will be a poem on the joyful side or on the melancholy side. With that the reader will already be able to tell what type of poem it will be, and help it understand everything else, most importantly contributing to the meaning of the work as a whole. An example of such would be learning the Mood for Nighttime Fires by Regina Barreca. The poem begins with, “When I was five in Louisville we drove to see nighttime fires.” And continues 2 lines down with, “It was
