Reversal of expectation
One of the poems involves a reversal of the story of the Beauty and the Beast in which the reader is asked to consider the story from the other way around. Instead of allowing the associations of that story to explain themselves, he shows how continuous it can be from another direction. This tendency for his poetry to reverse expectations extends to other subjects: there are secular prayers, the story of a can of peaches desperate to be opened, and on and on. These reversals are thematic, because they point at the unexpected sublimeness of everyday life.
Beauty and meaning
Glenday's poetry is often concerned with mundane-seeming everyday items. There is an ode to a can of fruit. There is a deep emotional poem about fishing, and there are humorous venerations of saints for normal, everyday tasks. In these poems, it is the attempt to find meaning that evokes beauty from everyday life, and it is the beauty that constitutes the meaning sought. The poet is a reflective one, and one who sees life as mandatory, and meaning as optional. Those who seek beauty have meaning, the poetry seems to say.
Light and hope for more
These poems are not religious. Rather, they look toward religion with a sense of hope and wonder. Instead of belief, the poems seem to scream into the void in hope of something more than the present realm. They don't portray God or religion, but rather, the poems seem to explore normal, everyday moments with religious intensity. The poet seems to say, if there is a God, perhaps he is hiding in the details of the present moment, in the canned food in the pantry, in the common stories of one's heritage, or in the small decisions each person makes in daily life.
