Fishes' Cry: An Analysis of "The Fish Are All Sick" by Anne Stevenson.

The poem, "The Fish Are All Sick" by Anne Stevenson, speaks a lot about the relationship between humans and nature, specifically the marine ecosystem, in the world today. Looking closely at the title of the poem, it seems that the poem is fictional - we usually hear fishes getting sick in fictional literary pieces. In addition to that, the use of the word "all" is an exaggeration of the dramatic situation of the poem - …

…hyperbole help in achieving the main purpose of the poem - to evoke into humans the sense of urgency, that the environment is still suffering because of his actions! But the irony also lies in here - even though humans are already aware of the situation (the fact that humans are able to exaggerate the nature's call for help), they continue to ignore this. Will we still continue to be deaf to the fishes' cries?