Sign Inventory 1, Week 1

Sign Inventory for Pickets by Amy Ellison from our course text.

• The first line in the first stanza contains no enjambment. Its the only sentence in the poem that is in one whole line. The first line is also the longest line in the poem. 
• The poem does not have any rhyme scheme.
• The poem uses strong, vivid concrete imagery.
• The poem also minds its P's and Q's nicely. For example: " This person has one arm, that person / two wives. Two-point-four children die / in the birth of the talk show." Mrs. Ellison provides the reader with several instances of specific quantities ( amounts and numbers), and also with precise things. 
• The poem begins with "Everyone", moves to "this person, that person" in the first stanza, then in the second stanza it becomes more personal when the writer says: "[I] watch [you] watching television...", and goes on to use "my", "we", "parents", and "my father". It moves from a very impersonal setting to a more personal and intimate relationship.
• Author uses a sense of irony "if you had your shirt off / and were cleaning a gun, / you could be my father."