Wednesday, April 23, 2014

couple's inventory, in order, unless (after Dear Abby)


couple’s inventory, in order, unless
 
pronouns, personal, ascending:
I, we, me, we,
you, you,
he, it, him, it,
he
 
nouns and substantives:
man, years, marriage, goal, dilemma, husband, track, time,
sex, times, year,
sex, times, life, couple,
sex, times, year, mind, business, days,
year


verbs:
have been, may be, ‘d had, married, is, is
keeps, have, has, informed, was,
do, think,
married, having, is, keeps, travels, is
gone
 
negations, descending:
not, not
 
adpositions:
to, for, of, in, that, only, that,
for, about, for, in, that, in, that,
for, about
 
conjunctions and junctions and miscellany:
a, but, this, a, a, and, and, a, a, what, also
 
numerals, no particular:
100, 30, 2013, 76, 30-plus, 76, 60, a
 
adjectives, ascending:
quite upset, sex, your, every, my, my, adequate, sex, normal, quite good, wonderful,
personal, perfect, our, normal
 
Source
Dear Abby. Couple’s Sex Life Is All About the Numbers. Houston Chronicle. 23 Apr. 2014. E5.
 
Note:

I didn’t have a lot of time, so was in the market for something short. As fate would have it, there was a disturbing, albeit relatively succinct question asked of Dear Abby today. The poem, as well as the question (and Abby’s unrecorded answer), is all about couples and relationships. Or rather, a particular approach to above.
 
Here is the prompt I was responding to:
 
Inventory is a method of analysis and classification that consists of isolating and listing the vocabulary of a pre-existing work according to parts of speech. Choose a newspaper article or passage from a newspaper article and “inventory” the nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions, articles, etc. Bonus points for creative presentation of your final lists.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I would love to see how creative you would be given time. I love the cleverness of this inventory.

Richard Thompson said...

Thanks! This was interesting in terms of how everyone responded. I like my adjectives. :-)