D.C. Berry's On Reading Poems to a Senior Class at South High
In "On Reading Poems to a Senior Class at South High" by D.C. Berry, the author vividly portrays the interactive experience of a poetry reading between a senior high school class and its teacher. The event is compared to a school of fish excitedly swimming around an aquarium until a sudden rupture in the aquarium causes everyone to "leak out." Berry uses form, sound devices, and poetic devices to enhance the different levels of excitement and interaction throughout the poetry reading.
The nontraditional form of the poem with regard to stanzas, capitalization and punctuation, and rhyme scheme and meter, helps create a sensation of free-flowing water within a somewhat structured environment. The lengths of the stanzas reflect the changing pace of running water and the running monologue of the teacher. The first two stanzas are of average length because the water and speech have just begun to flow. The water rushes at a very fast pace as the students begin to show interest; this is reflected in an eight-lined stanza, the longest one in the poem. The highest level of interaction between the teacher and the students is in the fourth stanza which describes "thirty tails whacking words;" however, this stanza is cut short as the bell interrupts the teacher's speech. The water feebly drips in the fifth and sixth stanzas as the teacher no longer speaks, and all the excitement is gone. Finally, the last four-lined stanza restores the teacher to his original position because it is equal in length to the second stanza when the teacher begins his reading.
Nonstandard capitalization and punctuation further enhance the easy flow of the words with few ...
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... also be seen as examples of metonymy within the context of describing the students as fish. In the first simile, the students are specifically referred to as the gills of a fish (instead of the whole fish) to emphasize their dependency on water. In the second simile, the class and the teacher are characterized as the tails of a fish to emphasize their active movement within the water and their interaction with the other fish.
Therefore, the poetry reading is vividly portrayed as a school of fish actively and eagerly exploring their aquatic environment. This characterization of the students is a pun because there is an implied play on words between a high school class and a school of fish. Elements of form, sound devices, and poetic devices are essential to achieving this unique depiction of the poetry reading as an exciting and stimulating experience.
In this poem called “Creatures” by the author Billy Collins there is a literary device called a metaphor when the reader is reading this poem. A metaphor is a comparison of two unlike things without using the words like or as. In lines one (1) through...
of images and details about the fish, making it into not only a poem with a purpose, but
Elizabeth Bishop's use of imagery and diction in "The Fish" is meant to support the themes of observation and the deceptive nature of surface appearance. Throughout the course of the poem these themes lead the narrator to the important realization that aging (as represented by the fish) is not a negative process, and allows for a reverie for all life. Imagery and diction are the cornerstone methods implemented by Bishop in the symbolic nature of this poem.
Humor and Irony are a unique combinations Collins displays in many of his poems, challenging the readers to interpret his work in different perspectives. In “Introduction to Poetry,” Collins offers a witty comparison between the definition of poetry and various other experiments. He asks the reader to “hold [the poem] up to the light/ like a color slide” (1-3), “press an ear against its hive” (4), “drop a mouse into a poem” (5), “walk inside the poem's room” (7), and “waterski across the surface of a poem” (9-10). Rather than stiffly explaining the definition of a poem, he finds creative and humorous approaches to explain his methods of enjoying the poems, and promote the readers’ interest towards discovering the true meaning of poetry. Just as the surrounding would seem different through color slides, he asks the readers to see the world in diverse viewpoints while reading and writing poems. Moreover, by listening to poem’s hive, dropping a mouse, and walking inside its room, Collins encourages readers to discover the concealed depth of poetry. He comments ...
Poetry, Drama, and the Essay. Ed. Joseph Terry. New York: Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers Inc, 2001.
Initially the reader is bombarded with an intense image of the fish; he is "tremendous," "battered," "venerable," and "homely." The reader is sympathetic with the fish's situation, and can relate because everyone has been fishing. Next, Bishop compares the fish to familiar household objects: "here and there / his brown skin hung in strips / like ancient wallpaper, / and its pattern of darker brown / was like wallpaper;" she uses two similes with common objects to create sympathy for the captive. Bishop then goes on to clearly illustrate what she means by "wallpaper": "shapes like full-blown roses / stained and lost through age." She uses another simile here paired with descriptive phrases, and these effectively depict a personal image of the fish. She uses the familiar "wallpaper" comparison because it is something the readers can relate to their own lives. Also the "ancient wallpaper" analogy can refer to the fish's age. Although faded and aged he withstood the test of time, like the wallpaper. Bishop uses highly descriptive words like "speckled" and "infested" to create an even clearer mental picture. The word "terrible" is used to describe oxygen, and this is ironic because oxygen is usually beneficial, but in the case of the fish it is detrimental. The use of "terrible" allows the reader to visualize the fish gasping for breaths and fighting against the "terrible oxygen," permitting us to see the fish's predicament on his level. The word frightening does essentially the same thing in the next phrase, "the frightening gills." It creates a negative image of something (gills) usually considered favorable, producing an intense visual with minimal words. Another simile is used to help the reader picture the fish's struggle: "coarse white flesh packed in like feathers." This wording intensifies the reader's initial view of the fish, and creates a visual, again, on the reader's level.
The poem “Students,” by Tom Wayman and the story, “Crow Lake,” by Mary Lawson presents two teachers who cope with the same difficulties of teaching. Although the teachers are faced with identical circumstances, their resolutions for the problem vary. Wayman, in the poem, and the narrator in the story both fails to make connection with their students, however, Wayman understands his students’ behavior while the narrator refuses to communicate and simply gives up on teaching.
It starts when Rainbow Fish, the most beautiful fish in the ocean is asked to share his shimmering scales, but he angrily denies them and turns all the fish reject him. All the other fish want nothing to do with him, nor do they want to befriend him. (As the story states) “From then on, no one would have anything to do with the Rainbow Fish. They turned away when he swam by” (Pfister 5). The author’s intention is to reveal to the audience how the other fish were not friends with Rainbow Fish due to his egocentric behavior. Rainbow fish was self-centered and believed to be better than all the other fish. He valued beauty, something that was of little value over his happiness. He then suffered consequences of those beliefs by being lonely.
Sound Devices help convey the poet’s message by appealing to the reader’s ears and dr...
With fewer than fifty published poems Elizabeth Bishop is not one of the most prominent poets of our time. She is however well known for her use of imagery and her ability to convey the narrator?s emotions to the reader. In her vividly visual poem 'The Fish', the reader is exposed to a story wherein the use of language not only draws the reader into the story but causes the images to transcend the written work. In the poem, Bishop makes use of numerous literary devices such as similes, adjectives, and descriptive language. All of these devices culminate in the reader experiencing a precise and detailed mental image of the poem's setting and happenings.
The poem itself uses a number of varied techniques such as alliteration, metaphor, simile, imagery, rhyme, rhythm and much more. These varied poetic techniques are spread throughout the quite lengthy poem, made up of 16 stanzas, ensuring that the audience remains engaged and interested. Kijiner uses a combination of increasing rhythm through out the poem and the metaphor of “lagoon that will devour you” to represent the ever more elusive threat of climate change, giving the audience a sense of utmost urgency regarding this
The narrator speaks about the fish in terms of commercial, where every part of the fish can be sale for different purposes, but as the speaker look in the fish eyes, starts to compare the human life through the existence of the fish. What the speaker found beautiful about the fish is that as the speaker looks into the fish eyes and start looking in a different way to the creature, she starts to identify a living creature instead of a creature that will die imminently. The speaker starts seeing the beauty of the fish when she start to compare the fish to a soldier, when she sees through the eyes of the fish the victories over death that this creature has won, and I believe that the speaker compares her own battles and victories to the one of this creature in order to survive. I believe that the “ personality” of the fish is humble, brave and that this fish have been battling for a long time for his life, that he has been involved in some sort of violence many times in order to exist. I also feel that this fish is tired of fighting and that he is venerable to the speaker
Kennedy, X. J., and Dana Gioia, eds. An Introduction to Poetry. 13th ed. New York: Longman, 2010. 21. Print.
In relation to structure and style, the poem contains six stanzas of varying lengths. The first, second, and fourth stanzas
Not only the words, but the figures of speech and other such elements are important to analyzing the poem. Alliteration is seen throughout the entire poem, as in lines one through four, and seven through eight. The alliteration in one through four (whisky, waltzing, was) flows nicely, contrasting to the negativity of the first stanza, while seven through eight (countenance, could) sound unpleasing to the ear, emphasizing the mother’s disapproval. The imagery of the father beating time on the child’s head with his palm sounds harmful, as well as the image of the father’s bruised hands holding the child’s wrists. It portrays the dad as having an ultimate power over the child, instead of holding his hands, he grabs his wrists.