Sign-Inventory 1, Week 2

The Artist as Left-Hander
Stephen Dunn


Each morning, thinking of you,
I rise from the counterworld of sleep
into those right-handed conventions
of day, so right I know
they must be wrong. Surely the world
belongs to others. Stick shifts.
Can openers. Definitions of decency.


I never recognize myself when America
gives back its images. The sitcoms,
billboards; sometimes I feel insane. 
Only baseball with its beautiful word 
southpaw has given me a proper name.
Southpaw. I'm about to attack, I'm
crouching in the woods with a name like that.


The other side, my advantaged ones,
is always angry, and is not dumb.
I've learned your language.
I've gotten into your workplaces and your homes.


--Dunn mentions "you" in the first stanza but does not mention you again to the last stanza. The second stanza focuses mainly on the speaker.


--The poem uses the adjective "counterworld" to describe dreams as an opposite of reality. 


--The word "those" in the third line alienates the conventions before the speaker establishes them as wrong.


--The poem plays on the multiple meanings of the word "right".


--The first alliteration in the piece comes at the end of the first stanza. "Definitions of decency." It brings attention to the line in order to emphasize that this poem is more than just right versus left. That we use right to define decency.


--The poem illustrates America's images as sitcoms or billboards. 


--By putting the word "southpaw" on the next line, Dunn emphasizes the word long before he italicizes it.


--There is a contrast versus the media of right-handed America and the woods-oriented surroundings of the left-handed speaker in the second stanza.


--The speaker focuses on his neglected left side throughout the piece, but then closes the poem by describing his "right" side as angry. 


--The poem focuses on the ostracizing of the left but ends focusing on how the left has assimilated, and hints at capable danger.