Alphabet

With “Alphabet,” Naomi Shihab Nye captures the emptiness that often accompanies a major loss. She achieves this by painting a landscape devoid of people but peopled by objects. In fact, every person mentioned in the poem is in the sky, whether literally flying in an airplane or metaphorically ascending as they pass away, lending the poem its ominous, lonely tone. The speaker ruminates on the multitude of deaths they have experienced, specifying how they need a “long cord” (Line 19) to hold the “string [of] names” (Line 18) of the departed.

Because poetry often relies on figurative or metaphorical language, indirect references, and interpretation, poets are able to write about topics and capture feelings and moods that are otherwise difficult to explain in more expository writing. For example, in this poem, Shihab Nye never explicitly says the community elders have died; rather, she uses the metaphor of them “going up / into the air” (Lines 4-5) and descriptions of everyday objects and idiosyncrasies—the baked goods, clothing, and turns of phrase unique to the elders—to illustrate what “we are losing” (Line 14), emphasizing the craterous absence the dead have left behind. The poem suggests that death’s impacts create a ripple effect throughout communities and throughout the world, its bookending images of flight illustrating the inevitable, unending cycle of life, mourning, and death.