Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Naomi Shihab Nye’s "Glint" is a delicate yet unsettling meditation on memory, silence, and the lingering presence of the past. The poem unfolds through a fragmented recollection of the speaker’s grandmother, her childhood piano lessons, and an ambiguous, unspoken discomfort that shaped her relationship with music. The brevity of the grandmother’s admission—“My grandmother mentioned only once”—immediately suggests a long-held silence, a story too painful or shameful to fully articulate. This sets the tone for a poem that operates in the space between what is spoken and what is left unsaid.

At the heart of the poem is an interaction between the grandmother and her piano teacher, an event that may have been fleeting but carried lasting consequences. The description is ambiguous: “His damp lips grazed / her cheek or maybe they touched her mouth for a minute.” The uncertainty of “or maybe” suggests either an incomplete memory or a conscious effort to downplay the event. The phrasing mimics the way trauma or discomfort can be minimized in conversation, especially within families, where painful memories are often shared in oblique ways. That “My grandmother / never felt comfortable with the piano after that” confirms the weight of the moment—what might seem like a small transgression left a permanent mark, severing a potential source of joy.

The speaker reflects on this absence of music in her grandmother’s life with quiet regret: “I think a / little more music could have helped her life.” This line is simple but profound, suggesting that the grandmother’s experience deprived her not only of an instrument but of an emotional release, a connection to beauty that was disrupted. The contrast between music’s potential to bring solace and its association with an unsettling memory adds a layer of quiet tragedy to the poem.

The speaker herself engages with the abandoned piano, though it is now an object of neglect: “Dust rose in little clouds from the cracks between the / keys. A few keys had lost their voices.” The imagery is evocative—the piano, much like the grandmother’s voice in this story, is silenced, neglected, unable to express itself fully. The “lost voices” resonate as a metaphor for all that remains unspoken in family histories.

The poem shifts subtly toward the speaker’s relationship with her grandmother: “My grandmother told me some / things but not enough. We had a sweetness between us.” This admission suggests a deep bond, but also a gap in communication, a quiet restraint that prevented deeper truths from being shared. The phrase “not enough” is both an acknowledgment of love and a recognition of its limitations, of all the questions that went unasked, all the answers that were never fully given.

The poem’s ending turns back to the piano teacher, but this time from a different perspective. Rather than focusing solely on the grandmother’s experience, the speaker briefly inhabits the teacher’s mind, speculating about his motivations: “His lips parting ever so slightly over / middle C, eyes pinned to the ripe notes on the sheet . . . / could he help it what they reminded him of?” The use of “ripe” introduces a subtle but uncomfortable sensuality, as if the teacher’s relationship with music and with his student blurred in ways he could not—or would not—control. This moment is deeply unsettling, suggesting both an inappropriate attraction and a self-justifying lack of accountability.

The final lines shift back to the speaker’s perspective, now with an almost ghostly quality: “Here I am trying to gather her lost / kisses from the air. They’re drifting just outside the tune.” The metaphor of “lost kisses” is ambiguous—does it refer to the stolen moment at the piano, to all the affection the grandmother never expressed, or to a broader sense of lost intimacy? The image of kisses “drifting just outside the tune” reinforces the theme of absence, of something almost recoverable but always just out of reach.

"Glint" is a poem about memory’s fragility, about the small moments that alter the course of a life without ever being fully acknowledged. Through spare yet powerful imagery, Nye captures the weight of unspoken experiences and the quiet ways they linger across generations. The poem does not offer resolution—there is no confrontation, no catharsis—only a lingering sense of what is missing, of voices lost and stories half-told, suspended just beyond reach.

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