Eleanor's Essay #15

Eleanor Hilton
English 9
Mr. Salsich
April 14th 2009

She’s Done It Again!
An Analysis of "The Little Brother Poem" by Naomi Shihab Nye

I have always enjoyed reading Ms. Nye’s poems, and "The Little Brother Poem" was no exception. Her clean, refreshing, amazing way of writing (asyndeton) about a barely broached (FAST) topic, the lives of siblings, is extremely interesting. Her use of figurative language really makes the poem stand out among others. To add to that I also feel that the poem can really match itself with the well-known short story "Sonny’s Blues" by James Baldwin.

Ms. Nye’s use of figurative language can become extremely confusing and, you often need to think about most of her poems to really understand the underlining meaning. In the third stanza she writes, “You disappeared into the streets of Dallas at midnight on foot crying” but does she really mean that? Is she trying to say that he simply moved away, disappointed with his life? (past participle) Personally, I feel he just moved away because nothing was working out for him at home and, maybe he was hurt by his sister Naomi. Also, in the fourth stanza she puts, “you’re Wall Street and I’m the local fruit market.” Perhaps it’s literally saying that they are in different classes or maybe he’s just behaving more professionally and has always taken the part of a leader. In this situation I think it might be literal. After all, this quote might be the reason the brother moved away. The final piece of figurative language that interests me is when she writes, “It’s a large order I know, dumping out a whole drawer at once.”. This quote to me is quite complicated because it’s a mixture of both. After those words she talks about cleaning that drawer, and before it she talks about everything she’s sorry for doing to him. I don’t know what to say on this one, perhaps we can just leave it as a pleasing combination of both. Just because I may never understand the full meaning of some of Nye’s complicated combination of literal and figurative language, it doesn’t mean that I can’t enjoy her poems time and time again.

In my opinion most siblings have the same type of relationship; this is no different in the ‘The Little Brother Poem’ and ‘Sonny’s Blues’. Both siblings in childhood pretend to dislike the siblings. They will disagree with lots of the things they do, and sometimes even claim that they hardly know their brother or sister. Underneath it all though, that is not the case. Both siblings are in awe at whatever good things they do, and the older one will be surprised at how fast the other is growing up, and most importantly, deep down, they both love each other no matter what is said or done. One common theme between the short story and the poem is that both older siblings have regret. They regret that they never apologized for the things they did, and they regret that when both grew up they didn’t continue to care for one another as they did so many years ago. Another similarity is as I mentioned earlier, awe. Sonny’s brother was so impressed after Sonny finished playing the piano at the bar. “Freedom lurked around us, and I understood” he really understood what his brother was going through and it got to him. This is the same with Ms. Nye and her brother. She may not have been proud of her brother when he left, but from childhood to adult she was in awe with who he was and what he can do. Everytime I re-read a part of either the poem or the story, I can’t help but think of how close the two are.

With figurative and literal language, complicated quotes and interesting phrases, Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem is an amazing read. I don’t know what does it, but I am always so excited to read another of her poems.