17 pages • 34 minutes read
Naomi Shihab NyeFamous
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1995A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Accessibility of Fame
Nye uses everyday objects and everyday encounters to suggest the accessibility of fame, if not the glitter and flash of celebrity but rather fame that is defined by the intricate interconnections between people and objects, between people and nature, and between people and other people.
Fame seems so out of reach. Celebrities seem to live in some wonderland alternate dimension where attention and flattery, money, and power elevate those few to pop culture fame. To a culture fascinated by the dynamics of celebrity and by how inaccessible such dimensions of popularity and fame remain for most, the poem counsels a reader to relax. Drawn to the sensationalism and glitter of fame that seems at best a coaxing fantasy, at worst a self-destructive spiral into low self-esteem, the reader does not realize they are famous already. Famous not like actors or athletes, supermodels or wealthy entrepreneurs, but rather famous like backyard cats to the birds that eye them carefully or a boot when it feels that solid step against the ground or a buttonhole awaiting the sure feel of a button. Every part of an individual’s life affirms that the person maintains a place within the real-time world, defined by what that person does, what that person sees, what that person feels. In that interconnectedness, the poem finds that previously inaccessible fame, or at least fame enough.
Fame then is not about elevating a few to the status of celebrity but rather each of us realizing the stunning dependency and network of connections that define who we are.
The Fractal Design of Nature
Informed by Nye’s admiration for the gentle transcendentalism and deep ecology that illuminates the nature poetry of Pulitzer Prize-winner Gary Snyder, “Famous” takes as the logic for its definition of famous the unsuspected design of nature itself. In drawing from images that suggest interconnectedness between elements of nature, the poem reveals what can go unnoticed, unappreciated: the subtle designs of the natural world, suggested by the groundbreaking revelations of fractals, how nature if studied into the subatomic regions reveals delightful designs in what are apparently random, chaotic environments.
The dynamic between fish and the rivers where they live, between cats and the birds they hunt, between voices and the silences they fragment, between tears and the cheeks they stream down, between boots and the earth against which they walk—these events can easily be taken for granted. Yet in “Famous” they reveal a stunning dynamic of dependency, a pattern of power and need that reveals the shallowness and superficiality of the dependency between celebrities and their audience of fawning fans. Nature offers authentic fame; nature is connected. Chaos is the hobgoblin of tiny minds, of eyes unable and unwilling to explore the luminous network of dependencies that defines any ecosystem. That reassurance, in turn, promotes a compassionate humanitarianism. Given Nye’s post-9/11 crusading advocacy for the place of Palestinians within the complexity of Middle East geopolitics, where that entire people can seem out of place and leftover, the poem uses the fractal energy field of nature itself to argue a necessary place for everything and everyone.
The Role of the Poet
In the closing two stanzas, the poet directs attention specifically to the role and place of the poet. The poem argues in keeping with its luminous vision of the fractal design of nature itself that the poet is a part of not apart from their cultural moment. The poet declares: “I want to be famous to shuffling men / who smile while crossing streets” (Lines 15-16), and to children with sticky fingers waiting in line at the grocery store. Ordinary, everyday people, readers who might find in poetry a way to reimagine their world, reanimate their faith in its unsuspected depth.
A published writer and teacher for more than 40 years, Nye embodies this concept of seeing in poetry a way to create community whether in the classroom or at public events, such as readings or literary contests that bring readers together. Forsaking conventional notions of the poet as some kind of visionary isolated from the world and toiling in solitude over draft after draft of poetic lines whose ornamental flair and intricate architecture serve largely to celebrate the poet, Nye agues fulfillment for the poet comes from finding a niche within their society. Poets are appreciated by spectacularly unspectacular readers who yearn for poetry to elevate, illuminate, and enlarge their world. Poets are modest un-celebrities who quietly and diligently use language, use poetry itself to make connections about their world, to see it as others do not, and to work those insights into verses that invite rather than intimidate readers. Poets then are like pulleys or buttonholes; they are paradoxically modest miracles that never forget the value of the service they perform.
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By Naomi Shihab Nye
