Like Lilly Like Wilson Poem Analysis

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“Like Lilly Like Wilson is a poem written by Taylor Mali. The speaker of the poem is Mr. Mali who is the teacher in the poem. The situation of the poem is about a teacher-student relationship. The teacher is trying to help his eighth-grade student named Lilly with her speech habit. Lilly is the worst student Mr. Mali has ever seen addicted to use the word like. The situation gets really bad when the entire eighth grade began to call her Like Lilly Like Wilson Like. This continued until Mr. Mali made his classroom a Like-Free Zone. Lilly could not talk for days and when she did, she told Mr. Mali that it is so difficult and now she has to think before she says anything. Also, Mr. Mali told Lilly it’s for her own good even if she does not like it. Therefore, the central purpose of the poem is what it really takes…show more content…
The speaker is very calm and patient when he was talking to his student, Lilly. The teacher shows care for Lilly whenever she needs the help. For example, when Lilly was having trouble finding sources to back up her thought for the research paper, Mr. Mali helped her by making her feeling very comfortable around him. So, that encouraged Lilly to speak her mind that she wanted to switch sides. Also, the teacher wants to tell her to enjoy it on top of to believe it. The speaker further states, “That changing your mind is one of the best ways of finding out whether or not you still have one.” The word choice of the speaker shows that he is a decent man with good thoughts to help his student. He tried his best to help Lilly when her classmates are making funs of her. He even named the poem “Like Lilly Like Wilson”. It seems like he did it on purpose so he can tell the story behind the title and show why he named the title this way. He remembers his student, Lilly. He told the story to show how he learned from Lilly how to be a good teacher and how it benefits Lilly and helps her grows up in a healthy
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