On Reading Poems to a Senior Class at South High analysis

203. On Reading Poems to a Senior Class at South High (page 273)


The poem consists of a speaker reciting poetry to a high school class.  Through numerous similes, the poet provides a better understanding of how the students view and connect to the speaker.   Automatically, the speaker recognizes the class as "orderly as frozen fish in a package."  Metaphorically,  the class is dead and trapped in their own world.  To them, the speaker is an intruder bringing in knowledge that they perceive as unfamiliar.  The students show no interest in branching out into the world of poetry and meaning.  However, as the speaker continues, he notices that the class has "opened up like gills,", or has come alive, and lets him in to teach and connect with them.  The poet uses the simile, "Together we swam around the room like thirty tails whacking words," to further convey the sudden connection the students posses with the speaker.  Until the class is over, both the speaker and students are now swimming in the same ocean of poetic meaning and knowledge.  Once the bell rings, everyone "leaked out," and the tie everyone recently had with one another is now broken.


Imagery is also used throughout the poem and goes along with the similes of fish that represent the students.  When the speaker first describes the class as a pack of fish, it is easy to visualize a classroom full of disinterested students sitting at their desks.  It is also easy to see the speaker standing in the front of the room and looking somewhat disappointed in the class's reaction to his presence.  Suddenly, as if "water began to fill the room," all the students seem to sit up in their seats and actually listen to the speaker.  The students are now with him and participating in his lecture.  When the class is over, everyone creates "a hole in the door," which shows the eagerness of the students to leave the room.  The use of imagery in the poem displays the students and how they react to the speaker in the room.


I think that the poem is implying how easy the meaning of poetry can be forgotten.  I associate the speaker as a poet visiting a high school class to teach them about poetry and its hidden meanings.  Poetry is difficult to understand at first, which is why in the beginning the students have no interest in the poet and his lesson.  However, as the poet continues to "drown them with his words," the students become intrigued because the poet is able to create a connection with them and invites them to all be lively "fish" in the same world together. The bell interrupts the lesson and the students and poet leave and move on into their separate worlds again like nothing ever happened.  The poet goes home and claims that his cat "licked his fins till they were hands again," meaning that the connection he just had with an entire class of people is gone and their discussion will be forgotten.  The poet brought the class into his world of poetry, but once they separated, the students chose to continue to ignore that world just as they did in the beginning.