In the first stanza, the author establishes an extended metaphor of the students as fish when he initially describes the class “as orderly as frozen fish in a package.” Each stanza brings in a different aspect of aquatic life when mentioning that “water began to fill the room” or “we swam around the room like thirty tails whacking words”. The steady use of the aquatic metaphor emphasizes how the greater part of high school students do not understand nor appreciate poetry.
At the end of the poem, Berry uses the allusion to Queen Elizabeth to accentuate the narrator’s appreciation for the arts and culture. Though the narrator named the cat after the queen, this also shows that the arts and culture are something that are he finds as very important since pets become an important part of a person’s life.
As a high school student, I could sympathize with the narrator. Many high school students do not appreciate poetry in the slightest. It is even more difficult to read a poem to students without being watched with blank and uninterested stares. Similarly, I like how the narrator named his cat after Queen Elizabeth; this bit of information about the narrator helps to make him more relatable and lifelike. Overall, I found this poem very fun to read, and surprisingly fun to analyze.
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