Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Naomi Shihab Nye’s "Almost, Never" is a meditation on miscommunication, longing, and the passage of time, wrapped in a fragmented, lyrical structure. Drawing from Charles Simic’s "Pain", which addresses suffering through the metaphor of a seamstress with a needle in her mouth, the poem takes on a similar exploration of tension—between voices, between expectations, and between past and present.

The opening lines immediately establish a contrast between two perspectives: "He says one thing / she says everything else." This binary opposition signals a relationship where voices do not align, where understanding is elusive. The image that follows—"all my life this small valley pulled / stretched till the earth rips down the middle"—suggests a long-standing strain, as if the speaker has been caught between two forces for so long that rupture is inevitable. This metaphor evokes both personal discord and broader, tectonic shifts, as if emotional distances mirror geographical ones.

The repetition of voices asking, "You see it like I do don't you?" reinforces the idea that both parties desperately seek validation, yet their perspectives remain irreconcilable. The use of "don't you?" suggests a plea rather than a question, highlighting the need for affirmation even as understanding proves impossible.

The poem then transitions to an external, natural scene: "Every evening grackles swarm the tops of trees / shouting what might be." The presence of these loud, chaotic birds parallels the earlier tension, their cries echoing the unresolved conversation. Grackles, often associated with harsh, discordant sounds, reinforce the theme of competing voices. Their movement, "over the houses / into the sky’s wide ear," suggests that their noise infiltrates domestic spaces, much like unresolved disputes that seep into the consciousness of those who witness them.

Nye then shifts to a more intimate perspective: "the child hears them strike his dreams / someone almost forty hears / like a birthday pulling him up but he pulls back." The poem suddenly becomes a meditation on time, on aging, and on how past experiences continue to exert influence. The "child" absorbs the world’s discord even in sleep, while the "someone almost forty" is caught between the inevitability of time’s passage and the instinct to resist it. The phrase "like a birthday pulling him up but he pulls back" suggests an internal struggle with change, as if aging itself is something the speaker fights against.

The return to dialogue—"He says This year for sure / She says The door is closed but keeps beating on it"—mirrors the unresolved push and pull of earlier lines. The man's assurance contrasts with the woman's finality, yet her insistence on "beating on it" shows that finality is never truly final. The metaphor of the closed door echoes the imagery of rupture and separation established earlier.

The poem concludes with grackles circling a courthouse park, their cries mixing with those of "wavery men shouting what might be change your life." The courthouse—traditionally a place of judgment and resolution—becomes a setting where transient voices call for transformation. The repetition of "what might be" suggests both possibility and uncertainty, reinforcing the theme of potential change that remains just out of reach.

The final lines—"I seem to remember being many more people / loose weave of wind knotted with cries"—carry a sense of nostalgia and fragmentation. The speaker reflects on past selves, hinting at the fluidity of identity over time. The image of a "loose weave of wind knotted with cries" captures both transience and entanglement, as if memories, voices, and experiences are interwoven yet never entirely stable.

Structurally, the poem is free verse, with erratic line breaks that mirror the theme of fragmentation. The absence of punctuation enhances its fluidity, allowing thoughts and images to bleed into one another. This lack of syntactical closure mirrors the emotional openness of the poem—nothing is truly resolved, and every assertion is countered by another force.

"Almost, Never" is a poem about missed connections, about voices that speak past each other rather than to each other. It explores the weight of time and memory, the push and pull of relationships, and the ways in which external sounds—whether birds, shouting men, or the echoes of the past—shape our inner landscapes. Nye offers no resolution, only the recognition that we live in a world of contradictions, where what is almost within reach often remains just beyond our grasp.

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