Famous Naomi Shihab Nye Summary

The daughter of Japanese immigrants to the United States, Mitsuye Yamada was born in Japan during her mother’s return visit to her native country. In 1942, she and her family were incarcerated and then relocated to a camp in Idaho. The Executive Order 9066 signed by President Roosevelt in February 1942 was the reason Mitsuye and her family were incarcerated. The Japanese attack on Pearl Habor in December 1941, gave military authorities the right to remove any and all persons from “military areas.”

The poem “Famous” by Naomi Shihab Nye is a short but very impactful passage. Through repetition this poem suggests that fame is not necessarily what we think it is. Rather than it being a widespread reputation it is formulated by perspective. This poem is a perfect example of imagery. Nye gives a new perspective to items that are overlooked or seen as being unimportant.

“Famous,” is a freeform poem, meant to show the reader that fame can be experienced in a multitude of ways. By not including a rhyme scheme, Nye puts emphasis on her message

11. A poet can work its magic on the reader by “choice of images, music of the language, idea content, and cleverness of wordplay” (Foster 17).

Prompt: Write a unified essay in which you relate the imagery of the last stanza to the speaker’s view of himself earlier in the poem and to his view of how others see poets.

Although the poem’s main message is that fat can be beautiful, the last stanza acknowledges that such a state of mind is just a possibility in the future.

Remembering memories is preferred, rather than living in reality. In the poem, we witness a woman remembering her high school idol, and she decides in the end to not go and talk to him. It is evident that the woman in the poem prefers her memory rather than the view that reality is showing her, this is shown when the woman refuses to go and meet the “hero she had as a girl”, despite giving herself a realistic reason why she should go and greet him, “you think how easy it would be to walk right over and tap him on the shoulder[, and] say hello” but she doesn’t. She doesn’t go and greet him because her memory remembers him as someone amazing, and admirable, “taller than the boys in your own class[,] taller even than your brothers”; where height is a reflection of her admiration. But her hero is now “fat and balding”, and to go greet him now would warp her perspective of her hero, from someone to idolise, to someone pathetic. In the end, she chooses to just remember him just the way she wants to, rather than remembering him the way reality does, showing that memories are preferred over reality. The woman also chooses not to talk to him because of her personal desire to retain her views and opinions of not only how she sees her hero, but also how

Poetry has a role in society, not only to serve as part of the aesthetics or of the arts. It also gives us a view of what the society is in the context of when it was written and what the author is trying to express through words. The words as a tool in poetry may seem ordinary when used in ordinary circumstance. Yet, these words can hold more emotion and thought, however brief it was presented.

Interest is further maintained throughout the poem by the use of unique literary techniques. Unlike other poems, ‘Famous’ does not rhyme nor does it follow any specific structure. It does, however, correspond with the spontaneity of incorporating everyday objects by not following a set structure. Throughout the poem, sibilance, anaphora, parallelism and allusion have been incorporated to achieve a constant face paced movement throughout the initial seven stanzas of the poem. These stanzas reflect a constant change in setting, replicating the insightful thoughts of an everyday person throughout their day, passing insignificant objects yet subconsciously identifying their importance. This fast paced movement is maintained through the use of anaphora in lines one, two, five and seven. In conjunction with anaphora, personification is used to enhance the already vivid image

Imagine having the influence to move and inspire people with the power of words. This is the power used by poets whose words, poetic techniques and actions engage the attention of a society while relating to a significant issue at their time in history.

symbolic richness, but at the same time the poem supplies the reader with a wide

One of my favorite poems is People by Yevgeny Yevtushenko. It explores the devastating nature of what it means to be human and the tragedy that, “Not people die but worlds die in them.” I have always been deeply moved by the poem’s sentiment. However, by examining People through the lens of iconicity and also with Michael Burke’s Iconicity and Literary Emotion in mind, I gained a deeper understanding of how Yevtushenko employs iconic devices to underscore and bolster his poem’s emotional effect. This essay will explore a few of those linguistic techniques and how they enhanced my reading of the poem.

“Thou art an emblem of the glow/ Of beauty- the unhidden heart-/ The playful maziness of art” (3-5). “To The River___” by Edgar Allan Poe is a poem about a young boy who is enthralled with the daughter of Old Alberto. The origin of the poem may be explained by the fact that Poe wrote it at the mere age of eighteen; a time when emotions flow freely and the mind is yet to be fully developed. The poem describes the young girl as a perfect example of raw and pure beauty through classic literary elements such as imagery, tone, rhyme, and diction. “To the River” is a beautiful poem that compares the elegance of a young woman to a crystal clear flowing river.

In conclusion, an important idea in this poem was to reveal yourself and not be afraid of who you really are, but proud of it. Techniques which helped readers to understand this idea were the use of similes and metaphors. This idea is relevant for people today to consider as we often feel put down by who we are, and instead of being what others want us to be, to be who we truly are. Young people in this society should be revealing their true self to the world and not be afraid of standing out. Katy Perry has shown that we do not have try to fit in, we are all individuals and we shine

Alexander’s primary idea is that poetry pertains to the individual. She states this explicitly within the first couplet, and then further explains her point through an abundant use of metaphors. The body of the poem consists entirely of metaphors, all with a similar message: poems have hidden meanings, all unique to both reader and writer. Alexander conveys this concept best in line eight, “emptying the proverbial pocketbook.”