Sound and Sense -Poem 203

I'm going to assume that the speaker is in fact a teacher teaching his/her students, as the narrator mentions going home while the students go to another class. There is no set rhythm to the poem, no meter or rhyme scheme. This makes the poem more powerful because of what it is about. The narrator mentions that he/she "tried to drown them with my words" (13-14), so having a poem in free verse style like this helps convey a feeling that speech and poetry is almost natural to human beings, and that most can in fact understand it well and enjoy it and will, using the extended metaphor, take to it like a fish to water. Were the poem actually set to a rhyme scheme and meter, it might not have the same impact, and might actually be less entertaining to the point that others might take the idea to be that only versed poetry can be understood or appreciated.

One of the obvious literary devices is the extended metaphor. The entire classroom ends up becoming a fish tank, and all the students fish. Figuratively, of course. This helps to give an idea of how, though the teacher was expecting the students not to understand or take interest in what he said, that they would all figuratively drown, they instead understood everything fairly well and were soon "[swimming] around the room]." The metaphor gives a known experience to colorfully describe the situation, and help to give a sense of remorse even as the class leaves. Out of their natural element of language and back in the real world, they return to their normal lives unable to have the same level of freedom as in the class. Another technique used is the alteration of tone. In the beginning, the narrator seems to be almost surprised at the students' appreciation and comprehension of literature, and then becomes a little remorseful when the class finally lets out. The narrator seems to be slightly upset throughout the piece, though, conveying the idea that he believes literature is not...how do I say this...either really understood or well liked, and that whoever does is often busy in the rest of the boring world, or is only appreciative when it is required as class work.

To me, the poem seems to be from a teacher, surprised but happily surprised at his/her class's understanding of literature. The narrator is a little upset at returning to the real world at the end of class, but there's not much to be done about that. Perhaps naming the cat Queen Elizabeth was to signify history classes, possibly stating that the other things taught in school take the life out of the students and the rest of the day. The narrator would prefer to have that eager class throughout the day because of the freedom that the literature brings, and wearily goes about the remainder of the day as lifeless as his/her class originally was.