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Body inventory

Device
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A poetic list or catalog of body parts used to explore identity, trauma, desire, or physical presence

Detailed Definition
Body inventory is a poetic technique that catalogs parts of the body—organs, limbs, sensations—to explore identity, trauma, desire, mortality, or presence; common in confessional, feminist, and disability poetics, it transforms the physical self into a site of narrative, resistance, or vulnerability, using enumeration to create intimacy, fragmentation, or reclamation of corporeal experience.
Example
Example in poetry:
Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself,” listing body parts (“the knower and the known… the lungs, the bowels sweet”) to affirm physical existence; Sylvia Plath’s “Lady Lazarus,” describing skin, hair, and bones as sites of trauma and rebirth; Lucille Clifton’s “Homage to My Hips,” celebrating the body’s power through inventory; Ocean Vuong’s “Someday I’ll Love Ocean Vuong,” referencing scars, breath, and pulse as poetic anchors
Additional Notes
Body inventory lists parts of the body to explore identity, trauma, desire, or presence; common in confessional and feminist poetry—consider how enumeration creates intimacy or fragmentation.
Also Known As
corporeal catalog flesh list anatomical lyric somatic enumeration blazon poem Body catalog
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