Sign Inventory, Week 5

Poem: “Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg” by Richard Hugo

1. The element of time span reverberates throughout the poem, shifting from one era to the next.
2. The “you” in the poem seems to act as a static agent as his or her voice becomes muted throughout the piece until the last stanza shows slight agency, but only because the speaker states what the “you” says.
3. The third stanza repeats question after question as a building block before the last stanza.
4. The last stanza remains ambiguous to the answering of the questions in the third stanza.
5. The term “silver” repeats throughout the poem in several different contexts, perhaps making a shift in meaning with the repetitive shift in the time frame.
6. The time spans mentioned before seem to create a general sense of time while the only specific date given is 1907.
7. The poem presents certain phrases and words, such as “last,” “only,” “resolves,” etc. that provide the illusion of permanence within the context.
8. The poem seems to convey the indistinct sense of places, such as the churches, jail, mill etc. yet twists such general areas with the specific names of places, such as Butte and Philipsburg.
9. The second stanza seems to shift back and forth between images of urban and pastoral sense of place.
10. The poem seems to make a perspective shift from the image of the church in the first stanza to questioning the church in the third stanza.