Sign Inventory, Week 7

Poem: “Einstein’s Bathrobe” by Howard Moss

1. The poem seems to bookend with the speaker as the active agent while the bulk of the poem consists of the speaker providing a fly on the wall view of the subject.
2. The speaker of the poem seems to mythologize the simple acts of the subject as the subject would “fly down from the heights to tie his shoes/ And cross the seas to get a glass of milk.”
3. The poem seems to shift its register from a more simplified aesthetic of space with the speaker’s notions of average morning rituals, which moves towards a larger one when the speaker notes on physics leading into thoughts on the universe, and then shifts back into the space of tea time.
4. The poem seems to shift between the domestic space of morning ritual, the pastoral space, and the cosmic space.
5. The beginning and end of the poem seems to indicate the speaker as an active agent of self creation that shifts into the speaker’s perspective on the subject as a creator.
6. The speaker seems to highlight and mythologize the furniture as a shipwreck in the beginning of the poem, yet uses the surrounding furniture and domestic space as irrelevant to the larger world.
7. The impact of the subject as a silent figure seems to juxtapose to the enormity of the mythologized element of his actions and description through the voice of the speaker.
8. The domestic atmosphere of the poem seems to shift most prominently when the speaker compares the subject to a pre-Raphaelite, shaman, and a Frankenstein.
9. The image of the dawn becomes a catalyzed agent as the speaker shifts from the dawn of the domestic space to that of Europe.
10. The speaker seems to use the descriptions of domestic acts as a refrain from the heavy register of the language in the poem, yet also blurs the line between the two within the bulk of the poem.