In the poem “Guests”, a possible denotation from the title is that a group of people come to the life of Billie Jo for a short time. The poem itself is about a man sheltering his family in the school due the dust storms. Examples of sound devices and figurative language are numerous in the poem. Assonance can be found when it is written “They’d cleaned the room first, and arranged it, making a private place for themselves.” The words “Making a private place”, both use the a sound. Imagery is found in the same sentence, “They’d cleaned the room first, and arranged it, making a private place for themselves.” The author, Karen Hesse, describes what the family did to the room. They cleaned the room, then moved objects around to make a private place