February 3

Ok. First things first. I need to understand the poet and find out exactly what stimulated and inspired her to write her poetry. What made her tick? So I read the Intro and did a little research in the library; hands on, the good old-fashioned way. We talked about it a little in class but that’s not going to be nearly enough. I need to dig it up myself. Keeping my research in mind I took one particular intriguing poem head-on and begged it to let me inside. I wanted to unlock this poem. This is how I have to read poetry or else it makes no sense to me. I need to pick it apart word for word. So if nothing else, I thought maybe this would offer some interesting insight from the unique perspective that is my own. Here is how the poem spoke to me personally:

Two Countries

By: Naomi Shihab Nye

(This is what it feels like to be a part of two countries; being uprooted from the land of my descendants and brought somewhere else. It leaves an empty feeling. I’m just an external skin and there is hollowness and a void inside of me that can’t be filled.)

Skin remembers vividly the tenderness of being touched.  It’s cohesion with other human beings. It is one of our most basic and fundamental needs. The girl remembers painfully how it feels not being touched for so long; a week easily feels like a year. “A gray tunnel of singleness,” is lonely because there is nothing and no one else here. She is a beautiful and unique feather; a piece that became separated from her great breed of species and mistakenly swept away. She was swept away by people who didn’t realize what they were doing because she is not measly dust. She was a very unique type of feather and would have contributed a great deal to the bird as a whole if it were able to stay attached.

The skin continued, however, to eat and walk and sleep by itself. It was still able to carry on its existence to a certain degree. It even began to learn how to wave and “raise a see-you-later hand” to the country that she has been extracted from and say, “It’s better this way. See you later and good riddance.”

But skin felt it was never seen because it was just skin; superficial. There is no depth to just an exterior skin. It is not whole or complete with something missing inside. Never known in its entirety like fully mapped out land. “Nose like a city. Hip like a city.” They are like cities. Cities are important trademarks of broad and defined areas. There are some resemblances she inherited and she is somewhat unique to her homeland, such as her nose and her hip. She has partial connections. She longs for a full connection, both inside and out; beautiful on the outside like the gleaming dome of a mosque and rich on the inside like corridors filled with cinnamon and rope.

The skin alone had hope, though. Inherent among humans is the ability for hope. Hope helps heal places that are scarred and makes a road/establishes a path that helps you get away from the hurt. “Love means you breathe in two countries.” Her family took that road and got away from the hurt. To seek future love and happiness meant that they dislocate themselves and breath air from a second country.

 Humans remember, though, also inherently, poignant specific pleasantries like the soft touch of silk and uncommon spiny grass. She carries with her these specifics and knows how she should feel. She doesn’t connect with it from the inside of her like she should; instead they are carried with her like postcards externally in her secret pocket.

Even now when she is not alone (because she has a new country and a new culture to embrace and be a part) she remembers the feeling of being alone and how awful it feels. She is grateful that her only disconnect is only as small as it is and not any bigger. She also thanks God or something “larger” that travelers such as her father uprooted himself from his native land and everything he loved for better opportunity for his family.