Determine denotative, connotative and figurative meanings and analyze how diction, multiple-meaning words and structure shape tone, mood and meaning in an original poem

Learning goal: Determine the connotative, denotative and figurative meaning of words and phrases as they are used in the text; analyze the impact of the author's diction, including multiple-meaning words and language that is particularly evocative, on the tone and mood of the text. Analyze how the poet's choices concerning how to structure specific parts of the poem (where it begins and ends, where stanzas break) contribute to its overall structure and meaning as well as its aesthetic impact.

Original poem — Closing Inventory

Nine hundred hinges. Forty coils of rope.
A drawer of keys cut once and never claimed.
My father reads the shelves aloud; I write,
the way he taught me: what is here, not hope.
We are not selling. We are taking stock.

He weighs the bolts by handfuls on the scale
and says the fasteners are holding fast,
and means the ones in bins, and means the rest.
The register gives back its drawer of change
as if it had been asked a question. Grave

and courteous, he thanks the last customer,
who came for nothing, bought a box of nails,
and paid in quarters, counted slowly out,
as if the coins were tender. They are tender.
My father takes them like a hand held out.

At nine he turns the sign. The street is spent;
the streetlight bears its weight of moths and rain.
He asks me what we have. I read the sum.
He nods, and does not ask me what it meant.
I do not tell him. That is the account.

Denotation, connotation, figurative meaning. The denotative meaning of a word is its dictionary sense: "stock" denotes goods kept for sale. Many words have more than one dictionary sense, and each is a denotation: "tender" denotes money offered in payment, and it also denotes gentle, and sore to the touch. A word's connotative meaning is the set of associations and feelings it carries in use, beyond any dictionary sense: "stock" connotes solidity, readiness, a business that is still running. An emotional meaning is not automatically a connotation; if a dictionary lists it as a sense of the word, it is a denotation. A figurative meaning is a meaning produced by a figure of speech such as metaphor, simile or personification, where the words do not literally describe what they refer to. "The register gives back its drawer of change / as if it had been asked a question" is figurative: a cash register cannot be asked anything, but the simile ("as if") personifies the machine and gives it a kind of patience, as if it too were answering the question the shop cannot say aloud. Determining meaning "as used in the text" means choosing among these senses by testing each against the surrounding lines, not by picking the first definition that comes to mind.

Diction. Diction is the author's choice of words. In this poem the diction is mostly plain and concrete (hinges, rope, bolts, scale, nails, quarters), the vocabulary of a hardware store. That choice matters. Grief is never named in the poem; the father never says the store is closing and the speaker never names any sadness. (Readers usually infer an ending from "We are not selling" and "the last customer"; the poem could also be read as one ordinary closing night, and an analysis should say which reading it adopts.) The plain nouns carry the feeling, and because the reader has to supply it, the feeling can arrive with more force.

Multiple-meaning words. Against that plain background the poet places words that mean two or more things at once, and the double meanings are where the poem does its work. "We are taking stock" means counting inventory (the literal sense) and also assessing one's situation (an established idiomatic sense, which dictionaries list as well); here the idiom reaches as far as what a life has amounted to. "Holding fast" denotes bolts that stay tight; followed by "and means the ones in bins, and means the rest," it also means the father and his family holding on. "Change" is coins and also transformation. "Grave" is an adjective here, "Grave / and courteous," meaning serious; but the poet leaves it alone at the end of a line and a stanza, where the noun spelled the same way, a burial place, can sound before the phrase is completed. "Tender" denotes money offered as payment (legal tender) and also means gentle, and also sore to the touch. The poem signals the double meaning by repeating the word: "as if the coins were tender. They are tender." The repetition insists that the second meaning is real. "Spent" means paid out and also exhausted; "bears" means carries and endures; and "account" in the last line is both the written tally and the story one tells about an event.

Evocative language, tone and mood. Tone is the speaker's attitude toward the subject; mood is the feeling the text produces in the reader. Language is particularly evocative when it calls up sense experience and feeling in few words. "The streetlight bears its weight of moths and rain" is evocative: it gives a precise night image and, through "bears its weight," extends the idea of endurance to the street itself. The tone is restrained and tender: the speaker records rather than laments. The mood is quiet, late-evening stillness with an undertow of loss. Diction produces both. If the poem had said "my heartbroken father sadly closed his beloved store," the tone would be sentimental and the mood would be spelled out; the plain diction with double meanings produces a tone of controlled feeling and a mood the reader discovers rather than receives.

Structure: where to begin and where to end. The poem begins with a list, "Nine hundred hinges. Forty coils of rope," before we know where we are. Beginning with numbers places the reader inside the act of counting and establishes the poem's governing figure: an inventory of objects that becomes an inventory of a life. The poem ends with "That is the account." The final word gathers both of its meanings: the tally the speaker reads aloud and the story of the evening, which the speaker chooses not to tell the father. The ending is therefore both a closing of the books and a withholding.

Structure: stanzas, breaks and patterns. The poem has four five-line stanzas. The first and last each rhyme their first and fourth lines (rope/hope, spent/meant), which frames the poem with matching patterns. The most striking structural choice is the break between stanzas two and three: "Grave" ends stanza two and "and courteous" begins stanza three. For the length of the white space the word stands by itself, and a reader may hear the burial sense before "and courteous" completes the adjective phrase. The stanza break can make the reader experience the double meaning in time, one sense and then the other, which a single line could not do. Not every reader will: some take "Grave" as "serious" at once and feel the burial sense only as an echo. An analysis may describe either experience, provided it ties the claim to the break. This is how a choice about a specific part contributes to the whole: the poem's meaning (a closing that is also a loss) is enacted in its structure, and the aesthetic impact, for a reader who hears both, is a small shock of recognition.

The misconception. A common error is to treat a multiple-meaning word as a riddle with one correct answer. Where a poem signals a double meaning, as this one does by repeating a word, by placing it at the end of a line or stanza, or by surrounding it with other words from the same two fields (money and feeling), both meanings operate at once, and the analysis must say what each contributes and how their combination affects tone and mood. The opposite error is to claim a double meaning for every word that has two dictionary senses: test each sense against the surrounding lines, and claim it only where the context supports it.

Worked meaning analysis: "as if the coins were tender. They are tender." Dictionary senses (denotations) in play: money offered in payment, as in legal tender; gentle; sore to the touch. Connotations: care, vulnerability, the nearness of hurt. Figurative work: the coins stand for the customer's gesture, which is itself tender, since he "came for nothing" and bought nails to have a reason to be there. Effect of repetition: the first "tender" can be read as a joke on money; the second, stated flatly, confirms the emotional meaning. Tone: restrained affection. Mood: the reader feels the kindness without being told it is kindness.

Worked diction analysis: Plain nouns in the first stanza: hinges, rope, keys, shelves. Effect: the poem sounds like a list in a ledger, which fits the speaker's claim to write "what is here, not hope." The one abstract word, "hope," is placed at the end of line 4 and rhymed with "rope," tying the abstract to the concrete; the rhyme hints that hope is also stock that is being counted and put away.

Worked structural analysis: Choice: break the sentence "Grave / and courteous" across stanzas. Effect on meaning: left alone before the white space, "Grave" can sound for a moment like the noun, a burial place, before it is completed as the adjective "serious." Heard as a first reading or only as an echo, the second sense brings death into a poem that never mentions it. Effect on overall structure: the break falls near the poem's middle, so the poem pivots from counting objects (stanzas 1–2) to people (stanzas 3–4). Aesthetic impact: for many readers a quiet jolt that invites rereading, which is the poem's way of asking the reader to take stock too.

Word ledger: Make a four-column table: word or phrase; the dictionary senses (denotations) active in the line; connotations or figurative meaning; effect on tone or mood. Complete it for at least eight words or phrases from the poem, including stock, fast, change, grave, tender, spent, bears and account. For each, quote the line and explain how the surrounding words make the second meaning available.

Independent performance: Write a 550–750-word analysis of how the poet's diction, including multiple-meaning words and particularly evocative language, shapes the poem's tone and mood, and how two structural choices (the opening list, the ending, or the stanza break at "Grave") contribute to the poem's overall structure, meaning and aesthetic impact. Success criteria: denotative, connotative and figurative meanings are each defined and applied; at least four multiple-meaning words are analyzed with both meanings explained; tone and mood are distinguished and each is named precisely; two structural choices are analyzed with a stated effect on meaning; every claim quotes the poem.

Read-aloud test: Read the poem aloud twice, once pausing at the stanza break after "Grave" and once running the lines together. Write three sentences on what the pause changes.