Workshop Response- "All in the Day"

Mary-Kate Sherer’s Poem “All in the Day”

I really liked the use of consonance with the letter “t” in the first stanza. I also enjoyed the repetition of the word “up”. I really like how the author mixes in the thoughts or words of the speaker with their experiences without using quotation marks; I think it adds some insight into the speaker.

            In general, one thing I think the poem needs to work on is its sound. Beginning with the second to last line of the first stanza and continuing to the last time of the poem, there is no flow and it begins to just sound like sentences or someone talking; it doesn’t sound like a poem anymore.

            The last line of the third stanza immediately made me go “oh no”, because it seemed to foreshadow a tragic event. So far in the poem, the speaker seems a little stressed at home and at work (trying to take care of the family and angry clients), and has noticed some weight gain, but continues to put others before her. The line “One more day won’t kill me”, implies that death is on the way, but that is not what we get at the end of the poem. I would consider revising this line, or maybe combining it with another line so it doesn’t stand alone, to avoid this.

            Lastly, I was a little confused about who the speaker actually was. Throughout the poem, until the last stanza, I assumed it was the mother of a family. But in the last stanza, which seems to be separate from the rest of the poem as a prayer, the speaker asks for patience with “Mom”. There is no indication that the speaker is having problems with their mother, so this seemed very out of the blue to me. I also didn't know who the speaker was talking to in the fourth stanza.