Explication for "On Reading Poems to a Senior Class at South High"
...ed in the discussion of the lecture. Their conversation ends at the ring of the bell to go to the next class. The teacher goes home where he is met by his cat, Queen Elizabeth and as the cat licked his hands, he felt that he became human again. This gives the poem a cheerful tone. This is a narrative poem in free verse. This poem is a metaphor that compares a classroom to an aquarium with the students and teacher being fish. “As orderly as frozen fish in a package” (3, 4) is a simile, which compares the students sitting like frozen fish in packages. “That they had only opened up like gills for them” (15, 16) is another simile that describes when the students become interested in the subject, they are open like gills on fish. Lines 15-16 is also a hyperbole that exaggerates the students opening up and allowing the teacher to get inside.. Last simile is “Together we swam around the room like thirty tails whacking words” (19, 20) which compares the group swimming around the room like tails talking away. An example of personification is “till the bell rang puncturing” (20-21), the ringing bell punctured a hole through the door allowing the aquarium to empty. The teacher also exaggerates “where Queen Elizabeth my cat met me and licked my fins till they were hands again.” (26-30) by explaining how his cat licked his fins and transformed then back into his human hands. The author gives an image at the beginning of the poem, when the teacher sees his students sitting and doing nothing. The image of a teacher’s imagination taking over to where water enters the room transforming it to an underwater environment. The stu...