Interpretation of Poem "Our Son Swears He Has 102 Gallons of Water in His Body" by Poet Naomi Shihab Nye

Over all, the poem helps imagine a possible student siting in a desk, reading a poem, and pulling his/ her hair out. Also the poem’s sound seems to be rushed. Together with the tone, it makes the poem sound like an angry student speaking very fast as to why he/she hates poetry. The rhythm seems to be regular. It shows to have a regular beat of unstress and distress. Each line follows a beat, but the lines don’t rhyme. The poem seems to show a few figures of speech. “Has difficulty retaining such things as addition and subtraction facts, or multiplication tables” meaning has a hard time understanding the poem more than math (Collins). “May recognize a word one day and not the next” means the reader would have a hard time remembering the overall meaning od a poem and its means (Collins). Also it would mean that the reader was very annoyed that he/she forgot everything about the

The different groups of people within the poem represent the different stages of life. At the beginning of the poem it talks about a young boy and his dog and swimmers. Several lines down it talks about “young lovers” and then families.

Though written in a very light and simple manner, the poem comes across as something very profound, laden with meaning through its incongruities. The persona, wanting to see something, often goes to the well and looks down at the water to see it. This certain search below the water's surface can be compared to man's search beneath the human experience for meaning, for certainty.

The first stanza, which contains the son’s childish speech, is short, only three lines. However, by the stanza which contains the son’s angry talkback, the stanza is double in length, having four lines. Each line represents a literal level of maturity and growth that the son has gained. As time moves on, he is able to gain more and more experience in life. As his experience accumulates over time, so does his hostility. His terse, childish begging for his father to simply read another story turns to an angry speech about how he no longer beleievs in his father as an authority figure. Despite this, the son’s psyche changes back, as all this maturation is played out in the father’s head, and when he returns, he is back to his childish self, bu this stanza is the longest in the poem. This suggests that when someone is able to mature enough, they are able to comprehend more of the world than they did before, and are able to act

The water is symbolic of romantic love as an overwhelming and transforming force that changes in form and changes the people involved. The wave is large, unpredictable and spans out as far as the eye can see. The movement of an all-encompassing emotion like love is impossible to contain, much like water. It is free flowing and goes on forever. “Love was a game, a perpetual creation (Paz, 2). Love and water are both creations of the divine and humans tend to use and abuse them. However, humans are emotional and social animals who need both love and water to survive. Waves have a way of hitting humans all at once, just like love. It renders humans excited and full of surprise at first “wave of surprise” (Paz, 2) like a crashing delight. It also leaves us always wanting more. We have an unquenchable thirst for love and affection, thus we chase it even in its most sinister forms, like an abusive relationship. The narrator is accepting of the wave 's presence when she appears in his home where he was once hesitant of the idea of her in his life. Love also transforms and can change us, like water changes states. It can become overwhelming and hard to breathe, but it is often all around us and

There are clues throughout the poem that express the man’s past experiences, leading him to have a hostile tone. The speaker represents his past as “parched years” that he has lived through (7-8) and represents his daughter’s potential future as

After the reader makes an effort and takes his or her time to fully comprehend the poem entirely, it becomes clearer that correlatively related ideas are expressed throughout the poem. The correlations between several metaphors extend to intensify ideas about the father. As the speakers’ father is compared to being “an angel” he does not literally mean that his father was an angel with wings or an angel from biblical times because that would be improbable for the reader to assume. What the speaker seems to suggest through his metaphor is that his father was his savior and helper. This idea is intensified throughout the poem because the father is being compared to a “lamb” which is symbolic for Christ, a globally symbolic healer and helper; the speaker also states his father was a getaway driver which suggests that his father guided him away from danger. Because the speaker also compares his father to a law abiding, favorable, person such as a “cowboy” or a “Texas Ranger” it seems as if he is trying to guide the reader’s interpretation of a “getaway driver” away from a an illegal activity such as robing a bank. In addition to comparing his father to helpers and getaway drivers, the speaker also states his father “drove the boys away.” This famous metaphor describing the driving of the boys away is known to be symbolic of a father directing

In the poem the speaker tells us about how his father woke up early on Sundays and warmed the house so his family can wake up comfortably. We are also told that as he would dress up and head down stairs he feared ¨the chronic angers of that house¨, which can be some sort of quarrel between his father and his mother in the house. This can also lead the reader to believe that the father may have had been a hard dad to deal with. However the father would polish his son's shoes with his cracked hands that ached. This shows the love that the father had for his son and now that the son has grown he realizes what his father did for him. The sons morals and feelings have changed him because as he has grown to become a man he has learned the true meaning of love is being there for one's family and not expecting it to be more than what it is. Consequently this teaches him a lesson on how much his father loved him and how much he regrets not telling him thank

The poem contains two stanzas with two different settings. One might not know much about the first stanza; however, in the second one the speaker is next to an ocean, perhaps, at a beach. So, while the first stanza symbolizes the mindset of the speaker, the inner dream, the second stanza symbolizes the outer dream which is what we see; life. The poem

In stanza two, ambiguity is more prevalent. Although there are some elements of abstruse, Ammons uses specific words in repetition to create a degree of complexity for the poem. Ammons uses words such as “summary”, “deeper”, “longer”, and “length” to convey the point. I question why Ammons used these words, in particular, “summary” and “deeper” because the overall second stanza conveys a message of an idea or item of great importance. “Summary” and “deeper” contradicts that message because both words contrast each other. Summary generally means a short version on main points of an idea or event while deeper is a term people use to compare two objects or items. Although Ammons does not in any

conveys the majority of the message in the poem, ' does it dry up like

In the poem, I get a sense that there is no bond, like my father and I have which leads to confusion in the narrator's life. For instance, in line eight when he says, "I would slowly rise and dress,/ fearing the chronic angers of the house"(8-9), this gives me a strong sense of sadness, for him because I feel that he is greatly deprived of what every child should have a good role model as a father, and someone to look up to. “Speaking Indifferently to him, / who had driven out the cold”(10-11) is saying that they really did not know how to communicate with each other. I feel that the boy will regret not having and knowing what it is that makes you who you are, and may never get a chance to have and hold a special bond with his father and having a relationship with a person that can not be held with anyone else. This would bring an enormous amount of sadness to my life had I not had my Dad there to guide and protect me, when I could have used tremendous support and security.

In the first stanza it is the semantic field of water: ‘waters’ (twice), ‘sea’, ‘drowning’ and ‘being drawn’. As I mentioned earlier, water is often the symbol of life but it also evokes tears, sadness and despair.

and that he believes them. The poem also translates into how living in the city is toilsome and that the city is unrelenting. On the other hand it shows how the city can be prosperous and happy with the city’s disadvantages. in the second half of the poem it’s telling how nomatter what is wrong with the city, the people are still proud of who they are.

The imagery of “Intellect” is challenging: the poem features a fountain, a wave, the shore, and wings—all in just six lines. This abstract imagery allows us to tap into our own intellect and it leaves room for the reader to interpret its meaning. Let us contemplate the fountain first. A fountain is often used to symbolise the source for something desirable: whether it be a drinking fountain, a fountain of youth, or the fountain of life we come across in Christian doctrine. Often times we crave rules; or we might just crave direction or someone to tell us what to do. Unfortunately, the source of these rules is often society. We choose to listen to the voice of society for direction, instead of turning inward. Perhaps by writing