The Speaker

Because speakers should not be equated with the poet, this guide uses the gender-neutral pronouns “they” and “them” to describe the speaker in “My Life Was the Size of My Life.” The speaker ponders the scale and meaning of their own existence by distancing themself from their own life. This distance (created through personifying the speaker’s life as its own entity) affords clarity because the speaker focuses on both minuscule, internal realities and vast, external, and natural phenomena. Even though the speaker recalls a period of intense disenchantment, they eventually renew their love of life through traveling. At the end of the poem, the speaker revels in their own existence.

The Speaker's Life

The speaker’s life is personified as something that exists in its own right, separate from the speaker. As the title suggests, the speaker’s life is the main focus of the poem...