Poetry in the eye of Naomi Nye

By: Briana Masucci, Brittany Bundschuh, and Carris Lahey

Poetry Commonalities• Literary Devices:• Personification:

as if the stone has swallowed it.• Visual Imagery• Simile

• Style:• No rhyming• common meaning displayed in new form

• Structure:• Meaningful fragments• Sentences split between lines:

Notes friends tied to the doorknob, transparent scarlet paper, sizzle like moth wings, marry the air.

Poetry Commonalities

• Diction style:• Short poems with strong words• Powerful words:

sizzle like moth wings• Common topics/tone:• Stereotypes• Dark

knowing you will readthis message and scream.

• Somber• Regret

Burning the Old Year

Letters swallow themselves in seconds. Notes friends tied to the doorknob, transparent scarlet paper, sizzle like moth wings, marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable, lists of vegetables, partial poems. Orange swirling flame of days, so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t, an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space. I begin again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves, only the things I didn’t do crackle after the blazing dies.

Childhood

• Naomi Nye was born in 1952• She was raised by a Palestinian father and American

mother• Her father was a Palestinian refugee• She spent her childhood in Jerusalem and San Antonio• William Stafford was one of her great influences• She attended Trinity University in San Antonio• She is still living in San Antonio to this day

Adult Life

• William Stafford was one of her great influences• She attended Trinity University in San

Antonio• She is still living in San Antonio to this day• She writes about ordinary experiences so

they are easily relatable• She has won many awards throughout

her life so far.• She is now a teacher, wife and mother to

a son.

Making A Fist

For the first time, on the road north of Tampico,I felt the life sliding out of me,a drum in the desert, harder and harder to hear.I was seven, I lay in the carwatching palm trees swirl a sickening pattern past the glass.My stomach was a melon split wide inside my skin.

"How do you know if you are going to die?"I begged my mother. We had been traveling for days.With strange confidence she answered,"When you can no longer make a fist."

Years later I smile to think of that journey,the borders we must cross separately,stamped with our unanswerable woes.I who did not die, who am still living,still lying in the backseat behind all my questions,clenching and opening one small hand.

Interview with Nye• Rachel Barenblat: When did you start writing? Were you

writing poems from the start?• Nye: I started writing when I was 6, immediately after learning

HOW to write. Yes, I was writing poems from the start. • RB: What did you write about, in the beginning? What

provided your first inspiration?• Nye: I wrote about all the little stuff a kid would write about.

At that time I wrote about my German grandma.

What the Critics SayPositive:• “Nye’s poetry creates no boundaries.”• “Nye engages her readers in the debate

over cross-cultural understanding, war, peace, and tolerance.”

Negative:• “Provides an unrealistic portrait of human

nature, addresses evil only at a slant, never directly.”

We Agree

• We agree that her poetry engages the reader using many things including culture, war peace and tolerance. She does use many good things to get the reader interested that have to do with • We also agree that her poetry allows

open space and creates no boundaries for the reader to think and interpret in their own way.

We disagree

• We disagree with the point that the critics say that Naomi Nye talks and engages readers somewhat with War. • We also disagree that Nye creates an unrealistic

portrait of human nature.

Conclusion• Unique poet• Relatable topics• Personal life has greatly affected writing• Poetry is free for personal interpretation• Each poem provides a message

Hidden If you place a fernunder a stonethe next day it will benearly invisibleas if the stone has swallowed it.

If you tuck the name of a loved oneunder your tongue too longwithout speaking itit becomes bloodsighthe little sucked-in breath of airhiding everywherebeneath your words.

No one seesthe fuel that feeds you.