Numbers

In the poem, "Numbers," Mary Cornish uses a playful tone and imagery to explain what she likes about numbers. The author is trying to convey to the reader that numbers are not like people, they won't judge you or care who or what they are used to count for. She says the line, "two pickles, one door to the room, eight dancers dressed as swans," to allow the reader to imagine what she is counting. In each stanza she goes through the basic concepts of math and gives images of examples of how to use them. For example, when she says, "add two cups of milk and stir," she is talking about addition and when she says, "of fish times fish, whose silver bodies breed beneath the shadow of a boat," she is giving an example of multiplication. What the other is trying to show in this poem is that numbers can be used for anything. You can count anything and anyone with the same numbers that every other person in the world uses. She uses imagery to show the meaning of numbers. Numbers are not just for the rich or the intelligent, they are for anything.