Final Poem Analysis on What Is A Good Friend

                                                What is a good friend
     In everyone’s life, everyone could meet many types of people, whoever have the same habit with you, or has the opposite personality with you. Everyone could feel lonely when their good friends are not accompanying with them. People do not like the time when there’s no one chatting with them, I have this feeling either. When I graduated from my primary school to middle school, I did not want to go middle school because there’s no one I am familiar with, I wanted to stay in my primary school due to my good friends who were in my primary school and they accompanied me when I felt boring. And when I went to my middle school or my high school, I still missed my friends who accompanied me in my primary school. Nowadays I live in America and I begin to think about one question that what means good friend and how many good friends do I have? Until I read one poem "What Is A Friend" by Barbara M. Zellner that focuses on the thought from the speaker on the relationship between good friend and himself in order to show the importance of having good friends which give me a clear understanding of good friends.
 
    In the poem, the title of this poem is a question that asks readers that what is a good friend, which the writer does not want to tell the readers first about his opinion on good friends, he wants the readers to consider about it and after readers think about the meaning of the good friends, then they could begin reading the poem. For every beginning sentence in every stanza, the speaker writes “ A good friend is someone” , which gives readers a question that does the speaker’s opinion on good friends is as same as mine? No one knows, so they would continue to read the poem. In the first and stanza, it talks about that “ A good friend is someone who cares about you.” and “ A good friend is someone who is willing to help you.”  These two beginning sentences make the readers understand what should their good friends do for them. However, in the third stanza, the speaker changes his style, he says that “ A good friend is someone you can talk to.”  This time, the speaker does not tell the readers what can their good friends do for them, he wants the readers to know that when they are down when they are in trouble, they could find their good friends and talk to them. The third stanza likes a conclusion of before two stanzas, speaker wants the readers to understand deeply about the importance of good friends. In the fourth stanza, “ A good friend is someone who will come and stop you from taking your life.”  A good friend needs to take care of you and make you feel positive towards your life, that’s what a good friend needs to do. Moreover, your good friend will share his experience with you because you are the good friends, he wants to you have some purpose in your life. So in the end, the speaker uses” A good friend will come and sit down to show you all of the good things to live for.” That is what a good friend should do for his good friend. In the speaker’s view, a good friend needs to have sympathy, should be eager to help others and be patient from the speaker’s eye, this is his answer on the meaning of good friend.
 
    For the structure of this poem, it is very interesting because the beginning sentences in every stanza are the same, “ A good friend is someone”. and also there are four lines in every stanza except the last one stanza. For the repetition of the good friend, the speaker would want us to think about our good friend first, then he could introduce his best friend to us. But the speaker does not use consonance or assonance in it because the speaker just wants to tell us about his good friend, which the speaker does not want us to think about this is a poem when we are reading it, he wants to us to play with his good friend, so he uses the free verse to write down this poem. Moreover, because of the free verse, this poem does not contain the rhyme scheme in it. The speaker just wants us to read and feel this poem freely. However, the speaker uses a lot of repetitions in this poem. Just now I said the speaker uses “ A good friend is someone” in the beginning sentences of every stanza.  But the title of this poem is called “ What is a good friend” and in the last stanza of this poem, the speaker just uses one sentence to conclude all the meaning of good friend. He says that” That is What a Good Friend Is.” This sentence is a conclusion of all the meaning of good friend. The speaker wants to remind you that when you meet your good friend, this poem should help you to figure out that is he or she your good friend or not.  I think this poem is very realistic, it does not include any hyperbole in it. It includes all the life experience of the speaker on the meaning of the good friends. In general, even though this poem does not have many figurative languages in it, but due to the free verse,  people would feel relaxed and cheerful when they are reading this poem. The repletion of the good friend does not make readers feel annoyed, in the opposite, every time people would ask themselves that what is their definition of good friends and who are their good friends. This poem gives me a new thinking toward the good friends. And the reason why I like it is due to its repeating ask question for himself, which would take a new inspiration every time the readers read it.