Writing From The Inside Out 2021 Week 38 Prompts
Based on Famous by Naomi Shahib Nye
Read the poem
Do your own reflection on it, noting what it inspires in you
Feel free to use your own reflection as your prompt or…
Use the selection of prompts below the poem
Pick one that inspires you and write (feel free to use only one or write several poems using different prompts) or…
Don’t use any of the provided prompts and follow your inspiration from wherever it comes
Famous
The river is famous to the fish.
The loud voice is famous to silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anybody said so.
The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse.
The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.
The idea you carry close to your bosom
is famous to your bosom.
The boot is famous to the earth,
more famous than the dress shoe,
which is famous only to floors.
The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it
and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.
I want to be famous to shuffling men
who smile while crossing streets,
sticky children in grocery lines,
famous as the one who smiled back.
I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.
—Naomi Shihab Nye
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47993/famous
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Oct 1, 2021 at 4:00 PM PST
My Thoughts
We in the west often glamorize, idolize, one might even say worship, fame and those who have achieved it, either by birth, by talent and effort, or by happenstance. They are made bigger than life on our screens and in our minds, treated like royalty, given privileges beyond our wildest dreams, and showered with money or gifts simply to show up or lend their names. It is no surprise then that many young people set their sights on fame. I heard a report about 10 years ago that claimed one of the most common motivational drives among teenagers was to become famous. The study was conducted in southern California and undoubtedely impacted by the hollywood aura. But even outside of that glittering city, everyone teenager in high schools across America is clear about who is popular and who is not, and where they stand in that continuum.
Naomi Shahib Nye’s poem, Famous, turns the tables on the whole idea. She personalizes what it means to be famous by situating it in a specific relationship: who, or what, is famous to whom. She dehumanizes it by placing fame in relationship to animals, things, and events. This opens the way to consider what is famous as what is important or what matters in the moment or what might captivate our attention. Then she returns, after several iterations, to assert to whom she wants to be famous and for what. We never know when smiling at someone might actually make thieir day or even save thier lives, and how, as a consequence, we might be famous to that person in their mind. I once remember seeing what I assumed to be a drunk man lying in the street while stopped at a light in San Francisco and having a profound insight about the inherent worth of a human being. That man is famous in my mind. Who is famous in yours and to whom or to what do you want to be famous?
Prompt Menu
Journal or write a poem about what fame or being famous means to you.
Using Nye’s way of definitions fame, to whom, or to what, might you be famous? To whom, or to what, do you want to be famous?
In each stanza, Nye puts a slightly different twist on fame. In the first stanza about water to the fish, could be what is always with you or around you. In the stanza about the cat to the birds, what is famous might be something or someone qbout which you you have to be vigilant.. Pick a stanza, and write or journal about the particular of quality of fame Nye capthures in it.
Take one stanza, like the one about tears or boots, and riff on other things in the same category (for instance, other animals instead of fish; or other items of clohting instead of boots, or other expressions instead of tears).
Another common motivational drive for many people is wealth. Apply Nye’s metaphoric thinking to wealth. What is wealth to a living room recliner? Or use Nye’s structure with other, similar normalizations, such as freedom, love, happiness.
What idea(s) do you carry so close to your bosom that they could be said to be famous to the heart?
What is your “pulley” or “buttonhole:” some simple non-spectacular thing you can do that you never want to forget that you can do.
As usual, write about anything else from the poem or life that inspires you