Fifteen, Maybe Sixteen Things to Worry About, Essay Example

The poem is narrated in the first person. The poem initiates with the first person possessive pronoun “my”. The conditionals “would’ and “could” are predominant throughout the poem.  The conditional “could” is applied fifteen times and the conditional verb “would’ is applied once at the end. The style of poem is a conditional poem with one outcome dependent on another condition. The author designed the poem where the first stanza is composed of three lines and each of the subsequent stanzas is composed of four lines.

In the use of the conditional verb “could”, the author is referring to using the outcome that may happen as a form of escape. The poem is narrated from the perspective of an elementary school child. The poem is composed of sixteen lines and one outcome. The conditions of the poem are designed to provide the narrator with an excuse not to complete his homework. The fifteen conditional applications of the verb “could” provide details that indicate the narrator’s willingness to be engaged in a number of other activities.

The subject of the poem is escapism. Each condition which represents a thought is concluded with a period. The conditions which are applied in the poem vary from extreme to mundane. In the first line, the narrator discusses the manner by which an accident may happen while he is engaged in attempting to dive.  This tragic potential outcome is relived with the aspect of levity which is implemented by the author by describing that the narrator’s nose may increase in dimension and continues to increase.

This quality is associated with a children’s tale where the wooden doll who is made in the likeness of a boy prevaricates and his nose begins increasing in length. In the following line, the narrator discusses how the instructor may request that the words be spelled out. The aspect of what might be done in order to prolong the activity is detailed with the first collections of parenthesis. The next line discusses how the narrator might confront a bully, whose size is exaggerated in order to avoid reality.

The narrator looks for another alternative in the following line where he theorizes that the parents might experience a breakup in their marital relationship. The next line of the poem describes how the teacher may make an inquiry of a faraway and remote place. This faraway and remote place may have the aspect of a long detailed explanation which may have the requisite of time consumption. The time that may be consumed by the teacher’s explanation of Afghanistan may consume the time required in order to give the narrator an excuse for avoiding his homework. The narrator continues and states that he may be tempted to mount a horse and ride it.

In the following lines he details that his mother may make him eat more liver, which is time consuming for an elementary school age child. The narrator continues that his father may decide that he needs to reduce the time spent watching television. He details that his instructor might request that he apply cursive styles in his writing. The application of the cursive writing style is time consuming. The narrator continues by stating that his friend may stop being cordial, the world might end, in addition to the celling decomposing and falling on his crown. In short, the fifteenth line makes a synopsis and details that there are many things that the narrator might worry about, and how he may exhaust the number of potential excuses for avoiding his homework. In the sixteenth line, the narrator concludes with the inevitable outcome…homework.

Works Cited

Pelusky, Jack. “Be glad for the nose on your face.” Poets.org, 2014. Web. 24 February  2012 http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prm/prmMID/15573

Viorst, Judith. “Fifteen, maybe sixteen things to worry about.” Poets.org, 2014. Web. 24 February 2012 http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prm/prmMID/15573