Upon first glance I noticed a reserved and somber tone, leading me to believe that this poem was going to be a reflection on something relatively sad. At the end of the first paragraph the mood takes a dramatic shift that leaves us wondering if this story rather may be an uplifting one. The author does an excellent job of concealing the truth before revealing it to us and it makes the poem more powerful to the reader. 

In the first paragraph, it reads, “though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice—though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles.” Voices exist around all of us and most of the time it is our own voice leading us in what to do; Often times though, people have different voices around them, including their peers. The voices that are not yours are the ones that are going to make this seem like it is ‘trembling’, and the burden that this puts on you makes you feel ‘the old tug at your ankles.’ While both these statements may be ambiguous, there is an understanding that there is some meaning behind these phrases. Mary Oliver’s style is very elaborate and you have to go back through the poem in order to see what she means in every line. The majority of the poem is narration, which I think can be distracting in other poems, but the complexity of Mary Oliver’s writing serves as the best option for the readers to fully grasp what she is trying to convey. At this point in the story the assumption is that the poem is taking a more melancholy feeling and it can be inferred that it is going to be a sad ‘Journey,’ until the next line that is.

The next line, “Mend my Life” intrigues me to the point where it almost distracts me from the meaning of the poem. This is at the start of the ascension during the poem and this makes me question whether the poem is actually changing. Mary Oliver should have focused on keeping the poem gradually rising instead of making us rethink what she may have been trying to convince us of. The melancholy tone of the first six lines gives us interesting insight for later in the poem, and when we understand it at a whole. Having this variation in the mood of the poem give it an interesting dynamic, one that continues to switch where our mind focuses, forcing the reader to think about multiple sides. The last line of the first paragraph changes the mood dramatically and sets a resounding foreshadowing for the rest of the poem. My mind switches to a different viewpoint, and makes me react to the emotion that Mary Oliver is displaying. Five words changed my mind for the rest of the poem and gave me a baseline for what was to come. 

The transition into the second paragraph is smooth but also has an interesting divide between it. It gives you the idea that everything is getting better, while also reminding you that you still need to be aware of what is going around you in order to assure that you don’t go back to an unhealthy place. This paragraphs functions well in displaying the balance that you need in your life in order to make sure that you can get the most out of it, and giving other people the chance to experience the same idea. In the third paragraph Mary Oliver starts to pick up the pace and tone in order to assert that this power is becoming more dominant, and as you keep going the difficulty to sustain this lessens. 

With this dominance the poem takes on a whole new meaning; the meaning changes from one of blocking out the voices around you, but rather finding your own and using it. The line containing, ‘that kept you company’ give us evidence that we always have the power to find our own voice we often just have to finally be given a reason to try and find it. Mary Oliver makes a powerful step in giving this poem life at every turn in order to make the reader continue to try organizing and understanding the way the poem has been written. This makes everyone read closer and look back in order to find the poem’s meaning.  It starts to focus on you and as a reader it gives you the impression that this poem is directly for you and that someone is almost speaking around you just as it said earlier in the poem. Mary Oliver lets us connect with the poem so that we can make the same transformation that is exemplified in the poem. Reading the poem is the start of gaining the power and makes us think about if we have found our real voice in the world. It gives you a reason to contemplate the impact that we see and we have. 

Throughout the poem Mary Oliver is taking us on her ‘Journey’. This journey takes us into different mindsets and affords us the opportunity to understand the reading in our own way one that is and important value the poem stresses It let’s us find our voice and use it such that there is a difference in how we value everything in our loves. This is an important idea because a lot of people try and find the meaning in life but often don’t find it, or choose to rather just ignore it and have someone else tell you what it is. Unfortunately I wish the poem was longer because the writing was so good and thought provoking that it really made me re-evaluate how I read through a text. It gave me a purpose for actually looking up words and trying to find why the poem was organized the way it was. It made the idea of a close reading seem like something of value, and I think that is one of the hardest things to do.