17 pages • 34 minutes read
Famous
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Literary Devices
Form
At first glance, “Famous” defies the expectations of traditional poetic form. There are no regular stanzas—the stanza lengths range from one to four lines—with no apparent pattern. Nothing in the form suggests particular stress or emphasis. The lines themselves do not scan like conventional poetry. The line length is irregular without evident plan. The diction is conversational. Unlike more conventional poetry whose elegant and intricate forms can alienate, even intimidate readers, the poem invites in readers.
Given that the poem celebrates the casual design of nature itself and the subtle patterns of connections that define humanity itself, that poetic form reflects the poet’s sense of world’s fractal delight. After all, the design is there. The poem, for instance, uses the construct “is famous” as a kind of refrain (a line, phrase, or word that is repeated for emphasis or rhythm), which allows the stanzas to each speak to the next. Each line creates a subtle aural cooperation through the use of assonance (the repetition of vowel sounds) and consonance (the repetition of consonant sounds) within lines to suggest patterning. Nye herself is an accomplished songwriter and brings that sensibility to the play of sounds in the lines.
If a poet created the architecture of the lines, however, those lines defy their own architecture, appearing to be wonderfully careless, breezy, ad-libbed, and spontaneous. The lines obey only their own animation and that poetic form in turn illuminates the poet’s sense of the world itself.
Meter
Meter, by definition, provides a poem’s argument with the reassuring tempo of anticipated beat, the ear delighting in the sonic play of carefully choreographed accented and unaccented syllables. Meter is a manipulation by the poet. After all, rhyme schemes and rhythm patterns are not naturally occurring in conversation. To hear these patterns operating within a poem gives meter its appeal.
If the poem captures the careless design of nature and the dynamic of mutual reliance that operates within it, the poem could hardly rely on the artificial delight of manufactured prosody. That manipulation of beat and rhyme would only distract from the complex world the poem explores and, in turn, place attention on the cleverness of the poet herself.
The meter here is open verse. The term “free verse” implies slapdash composition that Nye’s extended commentaries on the evolution of her open verse would disprove. Inevitably open verse, the manipulation within a line of consonant and vowel sounds creates meter. Rich long vowels, for instance, slow down a line. Hard guttural consonants fragment a line. The poem’s frequent sibilant “s” sounds allow the lines to drag and pull. That sonic tension creates a playful opportunity for dramatic (and individual) recitation by not insisting on metric patterns. The patterns are there, certainly. But they are subtle, earned by the cooperative ear, much as the design of the fractal world itself that so delights the poet must be earned by the cooperative eye.
Speaker
Until the last two stanzas, the speaker is generic, an open and observant eye capable of divining the complex unity of the world and eager to use the concept of being famous to suggest a world in which every part fits, every person fits. Each of the speaker’s observations—about, say, the cat or shoes or loud voices or photos—is cased in a single stanza that each begins with the word “The.”
Suddenly Stanza 8 gets personal. It introduces the first-person singular pronoun, “I” (Line 15). It creates a speaker, a voice that directly addresses the reader. Suddenly we are listening to a definable voice quickly given a context. We are listening to a poet eager to define the type of fame that a poet seeks. That jarring tipping-point moment allows the speaker to emerge to provide the poem its closing observation. That closing stanza alters the poem itself into a kind of meta-poem, a poem about its own creation. Poets, the speaker declares, seek connection with ordinary folk, folks walking down the street or shopping in grocery stores. Poets observe them all—the poet is the “one who smiled back” (Line 18).
In these closing stanzas, the poet emerges as the speaker opening up the apparently drab and ordinary world to new illumination, giving the reader the chance to reimagine that same world. In introducing the first-person pronoun, the poem reminds the reader that they are listening now to a poet. That connection, that dynamic, the poem affirms in these closing lines, is the sweetest kind of fame and enough for any poet. The poet, then, is famous to the reader.
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By Naomi Shihab Nye
