The Words Under the Words

“The Words Under the Words” is a type of blazon—a poetic form dating as far back as the Renaissance, in which a poet praises a beloved person by writing a flattering description of each of their various body parts or attributes. Based on the acknowledgement opening the poem and the personalized aspects of The Words Under the Words collection as a whole, it is safe to assume the speaker is also the poet. Nye honors her grandmother by writing praise for her “hands” (Line 1), “days” (Line 6), “voice” (Line 17), and “eyes” (Line 26). The pieces added together present a woman who finds hope and joy in her abiding faith while under the duress of war, exile, and separation from her family. The poem starts with behaviors a person might expect from a typical grandmother, but as it progresses the descriptions become more dramatic and metaphysical.

In the first stanza the speaker focuses on her grandmother’s hands. She immediately sets the reader in the location of the Middle East by focusing on the “grapes, / the damp shine of the goat’s new skin” (Lines 1-2). The grandmother performs activities that show her living a traditional, rural lifestyle—tending to bread, the orchard, and the olive press.