How does Mark Strand use imagery in The Continuous Life?

Strand uses both concrete and abstract imagery in his poem. Often his concrete images are illustrations of a generalization. For example, as illustrations of "household chores," an abstraction, he offers, "the beauty of shovels, rakes, brooms, and mops," concrete images. These images are also metonymic. Metonyms are a figure of speech in which one thing is represented by another with which it is conventionally associated. Household chores, in this case, are closely associated with the above items.