Search for Meaning

Throughout Smith's poetry collection, she explores the individual's lifelong search for meaning by presenting pieces in which the speaker's interrogate both the world around them and their personal interiors. In the poems from Part 1, the author actively examines the individual's interactions with the natural world. In the poems from Part 2, Smith considers how loss and relationships shape the individual's understanding of self. In the poems from Part 3, she considers how entrapment might alter the individual's perspective. Each of these sections, and the pieces they contain, therefore, create a complex examination of what it means to question and to understand.

The reader might refer to the poems from Part 1 in order to witness the role of nature in the individual's search for meaning and truth. For example, in "This Sort of Thing Happens All the Time," the speaker believes that having "memorized the calls / of...