Caroline Burlingham

H. Salsich

English

April 14, 2009

Wording:

An Essay on the Creative Writing of Naomi Shihab Nye and its Relation to “Sonny’s Blues”

When one comes across a poem or piece of literature that they not only enjoy but also understand, you can’t help but ask what the writer’s inspiration was. When you find something that you can relate to that makes you take a moment to simply think about what you’ve read, you conjecture (Fast) the story’s background, and why it was written. I have had this experience a few times during my short life, most recently after reading the poem entitled, “The Little Brother Poem” by Naomi Shihab Nye and, “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin. As my eyes skimmed the writer’s concluding words, I sat still, thinking. (Participle Phrase)

During this time, I thought about Ms. Nye. Not only did I learn more about who she is as a person, but I learned that she is extremely creative. One of my favorite types of figurative language in her poem are the metaphors. She described the differences between her and her brother by writing, “You’re Wall Street and I’m the local fruit market, you’re Pierre Cardin and I’m a used bandanna,” which illuminates the poem. This poem even ends with a metaphor. Nye closes the poem with a metaphor about dumping out a great amount of truth in a single moment and how it can be difficult. She talks about lack of time and how she is sorry, which in my opinion, is the perfect way to end the poem. Another type of figurative language I noticed was the imagery. When Nye talks about what times would be like if her brother were there, I began to see and understand their relationship. I enjoyed the part that stated, “[You were] the one who ran miniature trucks up my arms telling me I was a highway,” because my brother and I had that same relationship when he was young, which helps me understand.

This poem is very confusing and leaves the reader wanting more, which is very comparable to the story “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin. Considering the fact that both stories talk of tragedy and wanting second chances, they are remarkably similar (Periodic Sentence). Baldwin talks about a girl named Grace who died of polio, and I was able to obtain (Fast) from Nye’s poem that her bother was on his deathbed. Both Ms. Nye and the characters in "Sonny's Blues" wish nothing more than to go back in time to change the past. One difference I noticed was the hatred of noise and silence. Nye felt the silence when she was cleaning her brothers things knowing he wasn’t out mowing the lawn, just the opposite of Baldwin’s characters. “And when she did scream, it was the worst sound Isabel says, that she'd ever heard in all her life,” which just makes you want to cover your ears as if you could really hear it. Another passage from “Sonny’s Blues” reminds me of the good times Nye speaks of when they were young. In “The Little Brother Poem,” the two characters grew apart, but in “Sonny’s Blues,” they grew together. For Nye and her brother, it was the end; they loved, they laughed, they fought, he died. (Asyndeton) On the contrary, Sonny’s brother was finally able to describe their relationship by saying, “And I was yet aware that this was only a moment, that the world waited outside, as hungry as a tiger, and that trouble stretched above us, longer than the sky,” nothing else mattered. These two stories seem so different, yet their differences are the same.

This poem, and this story, cannot be read just once. If you become entranced, it is because of the simple beauty and true situations. I am sad to say that my brother and I relate more to Nye’s poem, but we can always aspire to be like Sonny and his brother. Through the reading of these literatures, I have learned that there will always be conflict, but there is also a way to change through understanding.