Famous

Although I'm impatient with the idea that all poetry should be expressed simply (if it's a complicated idea, the poet will need a complicated way of expressing it), I do like the idea behind Poetry 180--to expose more readers to some of the most accessible poems from today's poets.

One of today's poets whose work is represented there is Naomi Shihab Nye, who recently read her poems to an audience that included Amanda of The Zen Leaf, not a regular poetry fan. I was going to tell Amanda about some of my favorite Nye poems, and realized that I'd never written about one here. So today's the day:

Famous

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to the silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anybody said so.

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse.

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.

The idea you carry close to your bosom
is famous to your bosom.

The boot is famous to the earth,
more famous than the dress shoe,
which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it,
and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.

I want to be famous to shuffling men,
who smile while crossing streets,
sticky children in grocery lines,
famous as the one who smiled back.

. . .
I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it did.

Often when I feature poems here, it's because I'm feeling something described in the poem, and that's not so much the case today. I wish this poet would use the word "infamous" to complicate her poem a little more. Right now I'm a little impatient with the kind of "fame" this poem is celebrating. I've had years of being the one children remember because she smiled back. Yesterday at the haircut place while my son was getting his hair cut I had some smiles with a happy 9 or 10 month old whose parents didn't really notice. Total strangers--adults--comment on my smile sometimes; I'm a smiley person in public. And sure, there's a bit of satisfaction in merely being noticed.

Right now it just doesn't feel like enough to me, as it is in the poem. I want to be more like Wallace Stevens, finally revealed as a genius in his forties, than Emily Dickinson, whose genius was discovered in her drawers after death.

What I've got right now is a desk covered with papers to be graded and a yard full of cats who are well-known to the local taunting birds but whose fame has not spread far enough abroad to be known to all the local chipmunk families.

Wait. Perhaps I am feeling something described in the poem after all. Perhaps it's unrelenting everydayness that channels people off the quiet path that leads to fame and onto the easy and instant path of infamy. Maybe if I can hold out one more day without claiming my child has floated off in a balloon or something, I'll be one day closer to revealing the ideas famous only to my bosom.

Maybe as a blogger I should feel satisfied enough because on some days Subliminal Intervention and an unidentified person in Australia make my visitor map look more interesting. And you're reading this, right? Right?