Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Naomi Shihab Nye’s "Passing It On" is a meditation on clothing as a vessel for memory, transformation, and inheritance. The poem weaves together personal history, family dynamics, and the symbolic weight of garments, exploring how they reflect identity, change, and emotional attachment. Through a series of vignettes, Nye presents clothing not merely as fabric but as something that carries stories, emotions, and the past itself.

The poem opens with a whimsical yet profound observation: "Our son’s shirts attend kindergarten / for the third time. / They are still learning how to share." The reuse of clothing within a family, passed down from child to child, becomes an act of continuity. The personification of the shirts as students learning "how to share" injects humor, but it also suggests that clothing retains something of the wearer—something that adapts, shifts, and persists. The act of passing clothes down is not just practical; it is a quiet, ongoing exchange between generations.

The second section shifts to a more personal transformation: "To wear my friend’s lace camisole / I had to become a new person. / Since I was plenty tired of myself, / it was a pleasure." Clothing here is not just a possession but a means of reinvention. The lace camisole, delicate and intimate, represents a shift in identity—an opportunity to step outside the self and experience a different way of being. The speaker’s openness to change, her exhaustion with her own persona, suggests that clothing carries the power to temporarily reimagine the self.

The third section addresses the tension between accumulation and loss: "Closets bulging / with gingham castoffs, / calico and rickrack denim, / my mother begs, ‘Enough.’" The listing of fabrics—"gingham," "calico," "rickrack denim"—evokes a tactile history, each textile a reminder of past styles, past selves. The mother’s plea to stop hoarding these garments suggests an emotional burden, a reluctance to let go. Yet, paradoxically, when the speaker donates "dotted swiss curtains to the Salvation Army," the mother is "inconsolable." The contradiction reveals the complicated nature of attachment—sometimes we cling to things we insist we no longer need, and the loss of certain objects feels disproportionate, as if they contained something irreplaceable.

A personal declaration follows: "I’m in my linen period now. / That casual crumple, / that wrinkled weight, sustains." This statement suggests an acceptance of imperfection, a comfort in the natural and unpressed. Linen, known for its softness and ability to wrinkle easily, becomes a metaphor for a relaxed, lived-in existence. Unlike earlier references to garments imbued with nostalgia, linen represents a present state of being—one that is simple, practical, and sustaining.

The poem’s final movement shifts to a historical and deeply personal reflection: "My father won’t enter / a secondhand store. / He pitched his extra pants / into the Atlantic / when he started his new life." Here, clothing becomes a symbol of rebirth. The father’s rejection of secondhand goods, his act of discarding his "extra pants" into the ocean, signifies a deliberate severing of the past. He does not wish to carry remnants of his old life with him into the new one. The image of clothing sinking beneath the waves—"Under Ellis Island / whole wardrobes may be mingling / with seaweed, / buckling and bobbing with fish."—connects personal migration to a collective history. Ellis Island, the entry point for millions of immigrants, becomes a resting place not just for dreams but for discarded garments, remnants of old lives mingling in the water.

The final wish—"I wish for once to be dressed / in something sleek and thin / as original skin."—suggests a longing for something beyond clothing, beyond history, beyond the burden of inherited and accumulated fabric. There is a desire for simplicity, for something essential and unencumbered. The phrase "original skin" suggests both a return to purity and a shedding of everything extraneous—the weight of possessions, memories, expectations.

"Passing It On" is ultimately a meditation on the way garments function as carriers of identity, family history, and personal transformation. Naomi Shihab Nye captures the emotional complexities of keeping, giving away, and letting go. The poem moves between humor and nostalgia, practicality and longing, culminating in a desire to be free of all the accumulated layers and return to something elemental. Clothing, in this poem, is not just worn—it is inherited, discarded, remembered, and, ultimately, a metaphor for the shifting ways we inhabit our own lives.

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