Brenda Shaughnessy’s “McQueen is Dead, Long live McQueen” is an elegy in which the narrator explains how she has been mourning. There are many similes and metaphors in this poem to express the pain and the unclearness of her immediate future, which is stressful for her.
Everything actually is blurred,not just how you see.Glasses and shoes are solutionsto problems that are real problems,that of blurred world,that of touching the ground.
This quote really speaks to me because it sounds like the narrator is trying to make themselves feel better but instead, becomes cynical and feeling that their feelings are trivial when there are bigger problems in the world.
The overall shape of the poem is very interesting, and I feel like it reflects on how the narrator is feeling because if you had the poem printed out and turned the paper sideways, it looks like the lines are going up and down nearly continuously. It also sometimes looks like the left side is advice or things the narrator has heard, and the right side is her own responses. Another possibility is that the entire poem is her thought-process while mourning and the structure reflects her mood. All of these interpretations work out to me, so it could be all or none, or something in between.