Alphabet

When faced with loss, people are often comforted by memories. In this free-verse poem from Naomi Shihab Nye’s 1998 collection, Fuel, the speaker, faced with changes in their neighborhood, contemplates the lost knowledge and memory that accompanies the deaths of several elderly community members. Overwhelmed by the realization that this knowledge cannot be recovered, the speaker ruminates on the interwoven relationship between people, places, and the things that become forgotten over time. A confessional, free-verse poem, “Alphabet” mixes figurative language with a first-person point of view to evoke the speaker’s grief and create a mournful, contemplative tone. Using a blend of similes, concrete objects, natural imagery, and anaphora, Shihab Nye follows this speaker’s slow process of realizing their loss.

Shihab Nye is perhaps best known for the poems “So Much Happiness” and “Famous,” two poems that muse hopefully on the meaning to be found in everyday life. Like other poems in Fuel, “Alphabet” strikes a more solemn chord and centers on the themes of Death and Mourning, Identity and Place, and Loss of Communal Memory. Shihab Nye often writes about themes of alienation and memory, especially in her extensive work writing about her background as a Texan and an Arab American. In this poem, she raises questions about the relationship between the individual, the environment, and the community, questions the speaker seems to regret not raising sooner.

Poet Biography

Author of more than 35 titles and editor of and contributor to many more, Naomi Shihab Nye has had a prolific career. While she is best known for her poetry, Shihab Nye has also written essays, children’s books, works in translation, young adult novels, and nonfiction. In poems that focus on the ordinary details of everyday life, Shihab Nye has explored a range of subjects, most notably “local life, random characters met on the streets, our own ancestry sifting down to us through small essential daily tasks” (“Naomi Shihab Nye.” Poetry Foundation, 2016). Fuel, the 1998 collection in which Shihab Nye published “Alphabet,” was one of her most well-received collections.

Born in 1952 in St. Louis and raised in both Jerusalem and Texas, Shihab Nye has been writing continuously since the 1970s. She writes frequently about both her own Arab American heritage and the broader Middle East. Whether writing about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or about the life of Arab Americans after 9/11, she has published for people of all ages—from small children to teenagers and adults—to explore themes of tolerance, belonging, and humanity. However, it would be too simple to characterize Shihab Nye solely as a writer of her own experiences; in fact, her work seems driven by an infectious curiosity for the world and people around her, including her neighbors and other art; in This Same Sky (1992), she translated work by 129 poets from 68 countries. For her work promoting art and international cooperation, Shihab Nye has received the National Book Critics Circle Lifetime Achievement Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, four Pushcart Prizes, and the Academy of American Poets’ Lavan Award, among others. Additionally, she served as the Poetry Foundation’s Young People’s Poet Laureate from 2019 to 2021.

Poem Text

Shihab Nye, Naomi. “Alphabet.” 1998. Common Lit.

Summary

The speaker first announces that elders in their neighborhood are “going up / into the air” (Lines 4-5), or dying, detailing what these community members have left behind. There are tangible remnants, such as flowers in their yards, gravestones, and houses, but there are also smaller objects from everyday life that have been lost, along with the elders’ unique way of speaking, including “their housecoats / their formal phrasings / their cupcakes” (Lines 15-17). Focusing on these smaller objects and peculiarities, the speaker comments that, without these local elders, nobody will remember important details of the neighborhood, such as its layout and history. Everything the speaker sees, from “the bare peach tree” (Line 27) to the “rusted chairs” (Line 29), reminds them of the dead and their absence. The speaker then turns their attention to the future, feeling the heavy weight of “what will be forgotten” (Line 31), a sensation that reminds them of the feeling of seeing their house looking incredibly small from far above in an airplane.