Audit By Tony Barnstone Summary

Audit is one of many poems by Tony Barnstone, an accomplished poet, translator and professor. He followed in his father’s footsteps in becoming a translator, a poet and a scholar, and this is clearly seen in how he became the Professor of English Language and Literature at Whittier College. He has an extensive education, which includes a PhD from UC Berkley in California. His first book was a finalist for many national awards, and his works have been featured in many American journals. An audit is defined as a careful check or review of something. The poem’s title serves as foreshadowing of the events about to unfold in the poem. The sole purpose of the author’s choice of title was to embody the severity of the events stated in this poem. …show more content…
The moment you cease to be all that people expect, you lose your worth in their eyes. This is supposed to be a negative natural human quality as society does not mind its members being judgmental. However, this is not proved to be right to judge a person’s value by how profitable they are to you.
Another theme is self-worth and the impact surrounding people can have on it. Society forces people to believe that their value can be measured by others when in reality; individuals and their achievements and contributions to humanity and the outside world are some of the factors that can decide what they are worth. The precise diction in this poem is very exclusive and negative, as the words are very carefully chosen from many of the more serious, business-oriented terms to show that once humans lose their “value” as people, they can be weighed as objects. Words such as “sum” and “audit” are very calculating and invoke a cold and distant feeling, which was how the woman in the poem was depicted