Point of View

"Still Life" is written from the speaker's first-person perspective as she observes a group of addicts sleeping by a pond. Using vivid figurative language (including imagery and metaphors), the speaker associates the addicts with a rare and beautiful flower called a strider. This demonstrates the speaker's holistic perspective and ability to draw connections between seemingly disparate things. Underlying this urge to find connection is a concern with the human condition, as well as a social critique. The latter especially becomes apparent in the final lines, which ask, "Of what can you accuse them now, / beauty?" (7-8). Introducing the second-person pronoun "you" directly involves the reader in considering how society marginalizes houseless addicts. Here, the speaker initially takes on a sardonic tone, but flips the disparaging accusations on their head through the word "beauty" (8). In other words, the speaker drains the charged word "accuse" of all...