16 pages • 32 minutes read
Naomi Shihab NyeA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Shihab Nye consistently uses free verse—a lack of formal rhyme scheme or meter—in her poetry to strike a contemporary, confessional, and familiar tone. In “Alphabet,” she does the same, using short stanzas and short lines with consistent enjambment, a lack of end punctuation that allows the end of one line to flow directly into the next. The shortening and lengthening of the stanzas and the lack of punctuation for pauses emphasize the speaker’s rising panic and existential dread.
Writers typically use anaphora, repetition in successive clauses, when they want to emphasize content or tone. In this case, the speaker repeats “when I” as their crisis of loss builds—what starts out as the realization that “there is almost no one left / who remembers / what stood in that / brushy spot / ninety years ago” builds to images of emptiness: “the bare peach tree” (Line 27) and “rusted chairs” (Line 29). “When I” compounds the inescapability of loss as the speaker faces reminders of death everywhere they go. Here, anaphora creates a tone of grief-stricken inevitability—whether the speaker reflects upon past sights or predicts what they will see does not matter: They cannot escape the reality of their loss.
By Naomi Shihab Nye
300 Goats
300 Goats
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Blood
Blood
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Burning the Old Year
Burning the Old Year
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Different Ways to Pray
Different Ways to Pray
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Famous
Famous
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Gate A-4
Gate A-4
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Jerusalem
Jerusalem
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Kindness
Kindness
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Making a Fist
Making a Fist
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Morning Song
Morning Song
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My Uncle’s Favorite Coffee Shop
My Uncle’s Favorite Coffee Shop
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Shoulders
Shoulders
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The Art of Disappearing
The Art of Disappearing
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The Rider
The Rider
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The Turtle of Oman
The Turtle of Oman
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The Words Under the Words
The Words Under the Words
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Valentine for Ernest Mann
Valentine for Ernest Mann
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