Resultado de búsqueda
My belly button's caving in, My back is wrenched, my ankle's sprained, My 'pendix pains each time it rains. My nose is cold, my toes are numb. I have a sliver in my thumb. My neck is stiff, my voice is weak, I hardly whisper when I speak. My tongue is filling up my mouth, I think my hair is falling out.
- Mr. Grumpledump’s Song
Mr. Grumpledump’s Song - Everything's wrong, Everything’s...
- Childhood
Poems - Find the best poems by searching our collection of...
- Mr. Grumpledump’s Song
I'm going blind in my right eye. My tonsils are as big as rocks, I've counted sixteen chicken pox. And there's one more—that's seventeen, And don't you think my face looks green? My leg is cut, my...
Sick. Sick 'I cannot go to school today,' Said little Peggy Ann McKay. 'I have the measles and the mumps, A gash, a rash and purple bumps. My mouth is wet, my throat is dry, I'm going blind in my right eye.
The character in this poem seems to have come down with every possible illness, but what happens when she realizes it’s not a school day? Shel Silverstein crafts a poem that will resonate with children and adults alike.
- (7.5K)
- Summary
- Structure
- Speaker, Tone, and Mood
- Poetic Techniques
- Analysis of Sick
The poem begins with the speaker stating that she is not going to school. There is an endless number of reasons she supplies her parents to support her decision. These come list-like in the next thirty-one lines. They range from having measles to a cough and a shrunken brain. It’s unclear if the child speaker knows how absurdshe sounds. (But the re...
‘Sick’ by Shel Silverstein is a thirty-two line poem that is contained within one block of text. The lines are structured in a particular rhyme scheme. It follows the pattern of AABBCCDD, and so on, alternating end sounds as the lines progress. This pattern is common within Silverstein’s work. The poem was aimed at a younger audience, therefore the...
The speaker, who is a young girl named Peggy Ann McKay, is doing her best to figure out a way not to go to school, and as the poem progresses the number of claims of ill health gets more and more outlandish. The fact that there are so many different things she comes up with adds to the lighthearted nature of the text. Her tone throughout the poem v...
Although this piece was written with an audience of children in mind, there are still a number of poetic techniques that are worth taking note of. For example, Silverstein makes use of anaphora. This is a kind of repetition in which the beginning word or phrase in a line is repeatedmultiple times. It can be seen most clearly with the word “My.” The...
Lines 1-6
In the first lines of this piece, the young speaker begins by stating that she cannot “go to school today. There is no hesitation in this statement, nor is there any throughout the thirty-one following lines. She is determined not to go to school and she’ll do anything she can to convince her parents that she has a good reason not to go. The narrator of the poem, the person who is telling the story of Peggy Ann McKay, only speaks a few times. Otherwise, ‘Sick’ is a complete monologue. The fir...
Lines 7-12
The next lines contain a number of moments of repetition. The word “My” begins with two of the lines, and the word “And” starts two more. There are also a few dashes in this portion of ‘Sick.’ They are used to show pauses in the speaker’s phrases and also increase the few moments of enjambment. Such as between lines twelve and thirteen with the phrase, The final line utilizes the word “instamatic.” This word is not normally associated with sickness (a result perhaps of the speaker’s youth) bu...
Lines 13-18
These lines also use the word “My” a great deal. It starts four of the lines. Its repetition helps to increase the list-like feel of much of ‘Sick.’ The speaker is going to continue making outlandish statements about her health until someone stops her. They come one after another without a pause. From line 13 to line 18, among other things, she claims to have a cough, a hip that hurts, a “wrenched’ back, and a sprained ankle. These last couple of phrases are interesting as it’s clear she got...
- Female
- October 9, 1995
- Poetry Analyst And Editor
5 de mar. de 2023 · Read, review and discuss the Sick poem by Shel Silverstein on Poetry.com.
2 de ene. de 2019 · Order the book "Where the Sidewalk Ends" with an awesome collection of Shel Silverstein poems here! https://amzn.to/2XRLNMz ...more.
- 2 min
- 84.6K
- Storytime with Miss Jeannie
