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Deictic verse

Form
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

Poetry relying on deictic words (this, that, here, now) to anchor meaning in context

Detailed Definition
Deictic verse relies heavily on deictic language—words like “here,” “now,” “this,” or “I”—to anchor the poem in a specific spatiotemporal moment and speaker’s perspective, creating immediacy and drawing the reader into the lived experience of the poetic voice.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Audre Lorde’s “Coal,” “I am Black” anchors the poem in immediate spatial and racial identity; In Derek Walcott’s “A Far Cry from Africa,” “I who am poisoned with the blood of both” uses “I” to locate conflicted allegiance; In Claudia Rankine’s “Citizen,” second-person “you” points directly to reader experience; In Louise Glück’s “Mock Orange,” “It is not the moon, I tell you” uses deixis to reject metaphor.
Additional Notes
Deictic verse uses pointing words (“this,” “here,” “now,” “I,” “you”) to anchor the poem in immediate space/time; powerful for creating intimacy or urgency—be mindful of how deixis shapes reader positioning.
Also Known As
Pointing poem indexical verse demonstrative lyric spatial-temporal address Indexical lyric
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