A Chinese Bowl

It is very interesting to me of just HOW much you can learn about a character without being directly told details. This poem, “A Chinese Bowl” says so much about a single character without ever saying, “she is a little girl who”. While directly telling details usually leaves out the guest work, this poem doesn’t leave too much guess work. The hidden details are pretty obvious and put there. I feel that this is a neat poem because of this.

“on tinted legal pads one summer saturday in 1957″ this line gives up the setting. It is summer on a weekend and the year is 1957. Legal pads makes the reader wonder why there are legal pads around? perhaps there is a lawyer around?

“Absorbed at his big desk” okay, so now we know we are talking about a guy and there are legal pads and a desk. This is definitely a man with an attorney like BUSY job.

“my father works on briefs”. This once again confirms that this man is busy. This line tells us that the main character is the child of this man (first person narrative. we can also learn that this is a flashback).

On Reading Poems to a Senior Class at South High

First off i think it is interesting that that teacher described that class as being as orderly as “frozen fish in a package”.   That is a perfect way to describe kids sitting in their desks.. or i suppose in this case it is high school seniors.  it is funny though.  I’m  a high school senior and it just occurred to me that I am still a kid. bleh.

anyway….

Um.. wow as I read this poem it makes me realize how hard it must be to be a teacher. Basically she is calling this students fish who talk way too much. She said this in the second stanza.

What i really like about this poem is that it starts as a normal, well behaved class setting.  But as we all know, there is nothing too normal about a class behaving and i was slightly confused by the class being so orderly.  Finally, this poem became more realistic when the author played with the idea of the class room filling up with water and everyone being normal fish.   What the author is saying, is that being a teacher sucks and she does not feel normal, like a human being, trying to teach a bunch of seniors who don’t know how to act like civilized humans.  I like how the author is characterized at the end of the story.  ” I suppose i went hom where Queen Elizabeth my cat met me and licked my fins till they were hands again”.  So the author is sort of a cat lady.. and i totally understand.. cat’s have a tendency to make their owners relax. =]