Dead Stars Literary Elements

First-person speaker, later a plural and widely inclusive "we," standing on a suburban street curb

28 lines broken into 15 irregular stanzas, free verse

Line 5: "I am a hearth of spiders," metaphor of how the speaker feels mentally
Line 7: "the rolling containers a song of suburban thunder," a metaphor for how dramatic the trash bins sound in the quiet suburban night
Line 13: "we're dead stars too," a metaphor / reference to the fact that humans are comprised of the same elements that used to make up stars
Lines 13-14: "my mouth is full / of dust," a metaphor for the speaker's connection to stars

Line 3: "black bark," alliteration of /b/
Line 15: "spotlight of streetlight," alliteration of /s/ and internal repetition of "light"
Line 22: "many mute mouths," alliteration of /m/
Line 23: "bodies to bargain," alliteration of /b/

Line 8: it is ironic that the speaker finds the scene of recycling bins and Orion romantic until her partner points out that it is not

Contemporary poetry

Outdoors on a suburban street, in early winter

Dark and self-deprecating at first, later hopeful and inspiring

The human speaker against the constraints of her daily life

The efforts of the speaker to hold onto ambitious dreams and deep love for the world, to remember her own greatness and interconnectedness, despite life's tendency to narrow our focus on only what is immediate and obvious to us (symbolized by Orion versus all of the other forgotten constellations).

Line 17, "Look, we are not unspectacular things," represents a tonal climax in the speaker regaining her own resolve to be ambitious and hopeful, and it is prompted by the speaker's partner pointing out how few constellations they know.

Line 4, "so mute it's almost in another year" foreshadows the later images of stars (because we see stars across many light years of distance, so the light we see is literally from another year) and the "mute mouths of the sea, of the land" where muteness is no longer as disempowering as in stanza 1 because the speaker can speak for the sea and land

Line 17, "not unspectacular" is an intentionally understated and humble way to say "spectacular," representing the speaker's daring shift away from limitation and self-criticism

Line 5, "a nest of trying" can be viewed as an internal allusion to the poem "Trying" in the same book, which focuses on the speaker's infertility

Line 3, "black bark," synecdoche for the trees themselves
Line 20, "synapses and flesh," synecdoche for human bodies
Line 21, "rising tides," metonymy for climate change

Line 2, "Winter's icy hand"
Line 22, the sea and land are personified as having mouths that cannot speak

Line 7, "the rolling containers a song of suburban thunder," exaggerating the trash containers' importance for ironic and humorous effect

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