Module 2 Multicultural Poetry Book Review
5663 Poetry
Diana Stephens
Honeybee by Naomi Shihab Nye
How does one organize emotion? When the poems zing and sting, and the tears well up, and one stops to THINK? And connect. And one wonders, and remembers, and GETS IT. And it’s so good, because the work of all that made the revelation stunning? The only solution seems to be to write the review in poetry, which would take too long.
Naomi Shihab Nye takes the plight of the honeybee for inspiration and metaphorical comparisons throughout the 82 poems and prose essays. The book is dedicated to her grandmother who is quoted: “Instead of going to heaven at last, I’ve been going there all along.” Honeybee reconfirms the impression that Ms. Nye, herself, is acquainted with the goodness of heaven, revealed in the way the bees teach her, and her readers, that: “drinking it in,” (as in “dipping and diving down into the nectar of scenes,”) is essential in order to live well, and to be able to pay attention to the reasons why we are losing the “small things that blink in our darkness” like bees and lightning bugs. The alliteration, strong images, and word choices spawn stimulating, poetic prose [Introduction].
The poems are written in free verse, with pleasing sound combinations. She uses rhyme only occasionally (“Broken,” third verse,) but finding it in the prose was surprising and especially welcome: “. . . I was a fool, and I will always be a fool, and there will never, never, be a last day of school.” Assonance occurs more often: “A bumblebee is not a honeybee. It only pretends to be.”
The second stanza of “Communication Skills” demonstrates her considerable abilities with alliteration “The strength of strangers will help us survive. /Strangers are so generous. /they don’t know our faults, our flaws, /muttering good morning. . . .”
Generating metaphor, often extended, where a subtle reference at the beginning of a poem becomes the theme at the end of it, is poetic mastery, as demonstrated in “Young Drummer Leaving Alamo Music Company.” The scene is set with “losing two friends in a week and didn’t say good-bye /to either of them, when you’re staring straight ahead /at things getting worse in the world, wishing everybody could hear.” Drum sticks are personified, becoming you (the reader) “still hitting odd rhythmic patterns on the skin of this world,” and the “rat-a-tat” is the worldly pain that “is still hitting you.” This moving metaphor produces a wallop of emotional impact.
Emotional impact is exactly where the poet excels, using sensory images to arouse emotion, as in “Pacify”: “Teenage boy lying asleep on a Toronto sidewalk . . . /baby’s pacifier tucked in his mouth. . . . /Where is his mother? /How many times all mothers fail . . . .” The plea to the human family, “please someone /protect him on behalf of /the family /(for everyone’s sake) /we need to be” is poignant.
She introduces her theme of fighting, and how people are affected by it, in “Someone You Will Not Meet.” Specific sensory details are very effectively used to bring to a young person to life: “/Gives her brother an orange because /he likes them more than she does”; “/Gives her mother a handwritten booklet”; “/Rolls her socks into balls”; “/never could she have imagined being jealous of a bee” (who can come and go freely). This character is nearly frozen emotionally by living in violence: “/Staring at the sesame seeds /she could almost give them /names.)
The theme of the child (her son, by inference,) leaving/left the nest continues throughout, but the mother’s heart is especially exposed in “Password.” “I have made so many mistakes /you might think I would sit down,” acknowledges that the mistakes are not final, “till something that might not have happened had a chance again,” and also the fact, that, as mothers, we still don’t get it, “I have slept so many times /you might think I would really be awake by now.” More of this theme occurs in “The Little Bun of Hours,” such a gem. The metaphor, comparing food to time draws attention, “Days that felt like sheet cakes in long silver pans.” Then details of a specific childhood are recounted, before the knockout punch “/And I will try to remember when you liked me more than when you didn’t. It is the butter on the bread.”
Animals are often used to various purposes. My favorite is “Running Egret,” where the “unexpected, unpredictable . . . nonpartisan egret” becomes an eloquent metaphor for man’s need to see the answers to himself in nature.
The pacing or placement of the poems is very effective, especially evidenced in touches of wit that offset the heaviness of fighting and an empty nest. “Girls, Girls,” ends with “Clover honey is most popular /and clover is a weed. /All the worker bees are female. /Why is that no surprise?” And on the very next page is “Deputies Raid Bexar Cockfight,” where I laughed with Naomi at the idea of escaping participants running away “carrying a mean rooster. One mean rooster is a huge dad-gum rooster.”
Ms. Nye’s very adept associations of the familiar with the unfamiliar also explain why her poetry succeeds poem after poem. “Our Best Selves” contrasts a machine’s shifting gears with the bees’ “waggle dance,” taking us to a world where our work puts things together “in the hopeful hour,” and “won’t be blown apart, dissolve, or disappear.” When she brings back the bees, “Did you know bees ventilate their homes by hovering outside and fanning their wings?” to contrast with, “Light passes through thinking, /helps us find the field again;” one is amazed at the ‘light’ or truth of how much we need nature to keep us focused on our humanity.
Much of this work will appeal to older teens who have matured enough to be aware of the rest of the world. They may key in on the themes of violence, or the environment, or communication. Animal lovers will be amused (“This Is Not a Dog Urinal”).
This tome feels older, wiser, freer, and more eclectic than 19 Varieties of Gazelles. The shifting themes pull the reader from animals to war to tea to presidents to school, all the time finding a reason to be encouraged, a way to hope. (These poor sentences have barely articulated how well it succeeds. And I did not even get to the really great poems, at least that’s how it feels.)
5663 Poetry
Diana Stephens
Honeybee by Naomi Shihab Nye
How does one organize emotion? When the poems zing and sting, and the tears well up, and one stops to THINK? And connect. And one wonders, and remembers, and GETS IT. And it’s so good, because the work of all that made the revelation stunning? The only solution seems to be to write the review in poetry, which would take too long.
Naomi Shihab Nye takes the plight of the honeybee for inspiration and metaphorical comparisons throughout the 82 poems and prose essays. The book is dedicated to her grandmother who is quoted: “Instead of going to heaven at last, I’ve been going there all along.” Honeybee reconfirms the impression that Ms. Nye, herself, is acquainted with the goodness of heaven, revealed in the way the bees teach her, and her readers, that: “drinking it in,” (as in “dipping and diving down into the nectar of scenes,”) is essential in order to live well, and to be able to pay attention to the reasons why we are losing the “small things that blink in our darkness” like bees and lightning bugs. The alliteration, strong images, and word choices spawn stimulating, poetic prose [Introduction].
The poems are written in free verse, with pleasing sound combinations. She uses rhyme only occasionally (“Broken,” third verse,) but finding it in the prose was surprising and especially welcome: “. . . I was a fool, and I will always be a fool, and there will never, never, be a last day of school.” Assonance occurs more often: “A bumblebee is not a honeybee. It only pretends to be.”
The second stanza of “Communication Skills” demonstrates her considerable abilities with alliteration “The strength of strangers will help us survive. /Strangers are so generous. /they don’t know our faults, our flaws, /muttering good morning. . . .”
Generating metaphor, often extended, where a subtle reference at the beginning of a poem becomes the theme at the end of it, is poetic mastery, as demonstrated in “Young Drummer Leaving Alamo Music Company.” The scene is set with “losing two friends in a week and didn’t say good-bye /to either of them, when you’re staring straight ahead /at things getting worse in the world, wishing everybody could hear.” Drum sticks are personified, becoming you (the reader) “still hitting odd rhythmic patterns on the skin of this world,” and the “rat-a-tat” is the worldly pain that “is still hitting you.” This moving metaphor produces a wallop of emotional impact.
Emotional impact is exactly where the poet excels, using sensory images to arouse emotion, as in “Pacify”: “Teenage boy lying asleep on a Toronto sidewalk . . . /baby’s pacifier tucked in his mouth. . . . /Where is his mother? /How many times all mothers fail . . . .” The plea to the human family, “please someone /protect him on behalf of /the family /(for everyone’s sake) /we need to be” is poignant.
She introduces her theme of fighting, and how people are affected by it, in “Someone You Will Not Meet.” Specific sensory details are very effectively used to bring to a young person to life: “/Gives her brother an orange because /he likes them more than she does”; “/Gives her mother a handwritten booklet”; “/Rolls her socks into balls”; “/never could she have imagined being jealous of a bee” (who can come and go freely). This character is nearly frozen emotionally by living in violence: “/Staring at the sesame seeds /she could almost give them /names.)
The theme of the child (her son, by inference,) leaving/left the nest continues throughout, but the mother’s heart is especially exposed in “Password.” “I have made so many mistakes /you might think I would sit down,” acknowledges that the mistakes are not final, “till something that might not have happened had a chance again,” and also the fact, that, as mothers, we still don’t get it, “I have slept so many times /you might think I would really be awake by now.” More of this theme occurs in “The Little Bun of Hours,” such a gem. The metaphor, comparing food to time draws attention, “Days that felt like sheet cakes in long silver pans.” Then details of a specific childhood are recounted, before the knockout punch “/And I will try to remember when you liked me more than when you didn’t. It is the butter on the bread.”
Animals are often used to various purposes. My favorite is “Running Egret,” where the “unexpected, unpredictable . . . nonpartisan egret” becomes an eloquent metaphor for man’s need to see the answers to himself in nature.
The pacing or placement of the poems is very effective, especially evidenced in touches of wit that offset the heaviness of fighting and an empty nest. “Girls, Girls,” ends with “Clover honey is most popular /and clover is a weed. /All the worker bees are female. /Why is that no surprise?” And on the very next page is “Deputies Raid Bexar Cockfight,” where I laughed with Naomi at the idea of escaping participants running away “carrying a mean rooster. One mean rooster is a huge dad-gum rooster.”
Ms. Nye’s very adept associations of the familiar with the unfamiliar also explain why her poetry succeeds poem after poem. “Our Best Selves” contrasts a machine’s shifting gears with the bees’ “waggle dance,” taking us to a world where our work puts things together “in the hopeful hour,” and “won’t be blown apart, dissolve, or disappear.” When she brings back the bees, “Did you know bees ventilate their homes by hovering outside and fanning their wings?” to contrast with, “Light passes through thinking, /helps us find the field again;” one is amazed at the ‘light’ or truth of how much we need nature to keep us focused on our humanity.
Much of this work will appeal to older teens who have matured enough to be aware of the rest of the world. They may key in on the themes of violence, or the environment, or communication. Animal lovers will be amused (“This Is Not a Dog Urinal”).
This tome feels older, wiser, freer, and more eclectic than 19 Varieties of Gazelles. The shifting themes pull the reader from animals to war to tea to presidents to school, all the time finding a reason to be encouraged, a way to hope. (These poor sentences have barely articulated how well it succeeds. And I did not even get to the really great poems, at least that’s how it feels.)
Nye, Naomi Shihab. 2008. Honeybee. New York: Greenwillow Books.
