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Deictic collection

Concept
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 grouping of deictic expressions that collectively anchor a poem in a specific situational context

Detailed Definition
A deictic collection is a group of poems unified by shared use of deictic expressions—words like “here,” “now,” “this,” or “I”—that anchor meaning in specific spatiotemporal contexts, creating an intimate, immediate relationship between speaker, reader, and the poem’s situated moment of utterance.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Moose,” deictic words like “this,” “that,” “here,” and “now” anchor the bus journey in real time and space; In Frank O’Hara’s “A Step Away from Them,” “It’s my lunch hour… / and I go… / and I buy…” uses deictic markers to situate the speaker in midtown Manhattan; In Claudia Rankine’s “Citizen,” phrases like “you are in the dark,” “you are in the car,” “you are on the plane” form a deictic collection mapping racialized experience; In William Carlos Williams’s “This Is Just To Say,” “I have eaten / the plums / that were in / the icebox” relies on deictic specificity.
Additional Notes
A deictic collection groups poems that heavily use deictic words (“this,” “here,” “now”) to anchor meaning in specific contexts of time, place, or speaker; such collections often explore presence, memory, or relational dynamics.
Also Known As
Deictic anthology contextual collection indexical corpus situational verse grouping Indexical gathering Referential gathering
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