Naomi Shihab Nye’s deceptively simple poem “Famous” (2015) addresses a culture fascinated by quicksilver celebrity and by the dynamics of ruthless self-promotion. In that culture, fame reduces individuals to commodities, all made possible by the invasive reach of social media. In “Famous,” Nye’s speaker reminds the reader that authentic fame does not come from media attention, swarms of paparazzi, or the manufactured self-serving propaganda of publicity departments and press agents. Fame is quieter, sturdier, and far more dazzling.

Written in a conversational free verse with irregular lines and stanzas to underscore the elegance of the ordinary, the poem invites a happy kind of optimism and invites the reader to consider a complicated question: What does it mean to be famous? As it turns out, fame comes from a far humbler perspective than the message machinery of public relations firms. Fame comes from a person recognizing the stunning intricacy of a world where every object, indeed every person, fits, belongs somewhere and values that place.

Drawing on Nye’s multicultural identity (she identifies as Palestinian American) and her grounding in the study of comparative religions, the poem, slyly playful, delights in affirming unity amid rich complexity. Nye’s speaker presents the luminous idea that everything, everyone has a place and that contentment comes from recognizing that fractal design. As “Famous” depicts, everything is needed by something else; everyone is famous to someone else. In this, the poem, philosophical in its argument, reveals the intricate and elegant connections between things (and between people) that the careless and busy eye too easily misses. The observant eye of the poet, however, notices and, in turn, shares that wonder.

Poet Biography

Naomi Shihab Nye was born March 12, 1952, in Ferguson, Missouri, a town near St. Louis. Her father, a journalist, was a Palestinian refugee who immigrated from the Palestinian communes north of Jerusalem shortly after World War II. Her mother, an artist and teacher, was American. Nye’s upbringing kept both cultures alive and immediate. Her family relocated for several months to Jerusalem when Nye was 14 while her father attended to his ailing mother. In June 1967, the Six Day War broke out between Israel and a military coalition of Arab nations, most prominently Egypt, and Nye’s family returned to the United States, settling in the multicultural neighborhoods of San Antonio, Texas. Nye was 16 years old.

Despite (or perhaps because of) her nomadic childhood, Nye found refuge and stability in books. Early on she was a prolific reader, mostly the wisdom literature of both Muslim and Christian cultures—fascinated by the commonalities among religions. When she enrolled in Trinity University in San Antonio, she majored in English with a concentration in comparative religion. At Trinity, Nye studied Eastern and Native religious cultures and first read the works of three poets who would shape her perception of verse itself: the transcendental nature poetry of Gary Snyder; the dense philosophical explorations of Wallace Stevens; and the wry, contemplative verse of William Stafford that celebrated the miracle of the mundane. Shortly after graduation she married lawyer-turned-photographer Michael Nye.

Following graduation, Nye published two modest, privately funded chapbooks, Tattooed Feet (1977) and Eye-to-Eye (1978). Nye thus emerged as one of the most prolific and popular regional poets, producing works with a folk sensibility, a keen eye for the landscape of the Southwest, and a propensity for fusing different religions and cultures. With the appearance of her first full collection, Different Ways to Pray (1980), Nye quickly assumed her place among the most respected and widely read poets of her generation. Over the next two decades, Nye published more than 10 collections of poetry in addition to numerous essays on Arab American culture, and several children’s books, including the award-winning Habibi (1997), a thinly veiled autobiographical account of her own childhood. Her career-defining collection Words Under the Words, published in 1995, included “Fame.”

In the decade following the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, Nye emerged as an voice for the Arab American community. She sought to reintroduce Arab identity and culture to an America enraged over the brutality and violence of the attacks. Indeed, in her capacity as poet, Nye undertook numerous humanitarian relief missions to the Palestinian occupied territories near Jerusalem in the years after September 11. Her 2002 poetry collection, 19 Varieties of Gazelle, which reflected on Arab American identity and the caustic effects of intolerance and bigotry, was shortlisted for the National Book Award. Longtime professor of creative writing at Texas State University, Nye uses the classroom as an effective way to encourage young poets to find their voice and to use poetry to reenchant the world with wonder.

Poem Text

Shihab Nye, Naomi. “Famous.” 1995. Poetry Foundation.

Summary

The poem opens as a meditation and the opening line asserts an idea without identifying any narrative context or even a speaker, stating plainly that “[t]he river is famous to the fish” (Line 1). The poem then moves into three other definitions of fame: the “loud voice is famous to silence” (Line 2) because its mere presence shatters silence; a “cat sleeping” (Line 5) quietly on a fence is famous to the “birds” (Line 5) safe in the birdhouse watching that potential predator because they are only too aware of his fang-y threat; and, finally, the tear is famous to the cheek, albeit only “briefly” (Line 7), because it is down the swell of the cheek that the tear falls.

The line of thinking continues for three additional perspectives on being famous, observations that become progressively more abstract and philosophical. First the poet explores having an idea. An idea that “you” (Line 8) do not share, an idea “you” (Line 8) keep inside—and the shift to second person in these lines creates an urgency and immediacy to the dynamic between poet and reader—that idea “is famous to your bosom” (Line 9) because it is in the heart where such unexpressed ideas are kept.

The speaker next offers the images of two contrasting types of footwear and describes how each footwear is famous to the surfaces they tread. Boots, “famous to the earth” (Line 10) are “more famous” (Line 11) than dress shoes, which are “famous only to floors” (Line 13). Then the speaker considers a photograph, a keepsake precious to someone. That “bent” (Line 14) photograph, a fond possession carried everywhere, is “famous” (Line 14)—but more to the person who carries the photo than to the subject of the photograph (who may not even know about the photo).

As the poem closes, the speaker introduces herself into the context of the poem. What had been, to this point, observations about the fractal reality of nature, about cats and tear drops, fish and shoes, now turns to the confessional tone. The speaker admits that she also “want[s] to be famous” (Line 16) and envisions being acknowledged by smiling passersby and by sticky-fingered kids eating candy in a grocery store check-out line.

In the final stanza, the speaker now sums up this inquiry by admitting a desire to be famous like a common pulley or a simple buttonhole—famous for doing something spectacular in an un-spectacular way. The poem ends with an appreciation for these objects and how they “never forgot” (Line 21) their capabilities.