Shoulders

Naomi Shihab Nye’s writing was already highly acclaimed by the publication of Red Suitcase, making her one of the leading voices within the literary community during the mid-1990s. The collection is largely about ordinary items—a grandmother’s scarf, an alarm clock, a father carrying his sleeping son on his shoulders—all of which are seen in a new light through Nye’s control over the English language. Her voice is warm, hopeful, and generous, turning the ordinary into something extraordinary.

One of Nye’s major literary influences is poet Carl Sandburg. Sandburg was known for using the language of the people, that is, everyday speech to construct his poems. He rejected the idea that poetry is highbrow and only for the exceedingly intelligent, such as in his short poem “Fog”:

The fog comes

on little cat feet.

It sits looking

over harbor and city

on silent haunches

and then moves on.

In “Fog,” Sandburg uses everyday speech and familiar terms like “cat” (Line 2), “harbor” (Line 4), and “city” (Line 4) to depict a mood of contemplation and movement via nature. Nye’s poetry exists within a similar space. Nye uses conversational language to construct her poems, such as in “Shoulders,” when she states: “A man crosses the street in rain, / stepping gently, looking two times north and south, / because his son is asleep on his shoulder” (Lines 1-3). The paired back lines here offer simple language, and yet the messages within Nye’s poems are extremely powerful and deeply moving, especially because they are relatable and intimate. “Shoulders” perfectly articulates the ethos of Nye’s writing as a whole, revealing to the masses that poetry is for everyone.