Poetry is one of those subjects that most students stay as far away as possible from because it seems too deep and unrelateable to a young person's age and life. It's poems like these and with this kind of structure that draws students into reading poetry and even liking it. Berry's style is very conversational and loose, which makes the reader listen and feel comfortable. He uses modern day language, but still with symbolism and description to pull the reader in and create mental images.
When he says "I noticed them sitting there as orderly as frozen fish in a package" it makes me think about my psychology class, and Mrs Langford, and how society (and the school system) teaches us to be and learn in a certain way, which is usually all the same. As the the poem reader starts to read the poetry to the class he is even surprised that it affects them until the "water" reaches his own ears. Just as they are starting to take it all in and understand and discuss the bell rang, "puncturing a hole in the door where we all leaked out." For me, there was a very vivid visual of a gymnasium where a guest speaker was reading poetry and the students were in there with the expectation that it was just a waste of time, but as he started to read to them, the room started filling up as they all started to discuss an get excited. Then, just like most of our assemblies, they forgot about it and moved on to their next class to focus on something else.
Although this poem wasn't too hard to interpret, I still really liked the message and writing style.
Great comments. Sad that we forget so quickly...
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