Week 5, Sign Inventory

The Bean Eaters
by Gwendolyn Brooks
They eat beans mostly, this old yellow pair. Dinner is a casual affair. Plain chipware on a plain and creaking wood, Tin flatware. Two who are Mostly Good. Two who have lived their day, But keep on putting on their clothes And putting things away. And remembering . . . Remembering, with twinklings and twinges, As they lean over the beans in their rented back room that is full of beads and receipts and dolls and cloths, tobacco crumbs, vases and fringes. 1. The rhyme scheme is irregular. AABA , BCDB , etc.  2. Use of personification in the last stanza, twinkling and twinges.  3. Tone of a guided tour with the use of "they".  4. Impulse to count and separate: "two..two"  5. The last two lines of the second stanza begins  with conjunctions: "and, but". 6. The speaker only refers to the beans  one time in the last stanza.  7. It's interesting that the poem ends with a list.  Most poems that we have read in class or in the anthologies  either begin or have one in the middle, not the end.  8. "the rented back room": This poem emphasizes  the lack of ownership. 9. The poet uses many "to be" verbs.  The verbs are not very descriptive or active. 10. The tense shifts often from past to gerund form.