A contemporary Palestinian-American writer in 2021, Naomi Shihab Nye serves as the Poetry Foundation’s Young People’s Poet Laureate for the 2019-21 term. Nye, a world traveler and self-proclaimed “wandering poet,” receives inspiration for her work from ordinary life and people. She writes poetry for adults and children, essays, children’s novels, and edits anthologies. Nye works to create poetry that cross-culturally connects, bridging together her readers. Her poem “Making a Fist” (1988) was published in Grape Leaves: A Century of Arab American Poetry—an anthology which seeks to bring Arab-American poetry into mainstream literature. “Making a Fist” has themes of growing up, the borders people cross in life, and life’s unanswerable woes. Nye writes from the perspective of her childhood and adult selves, connecting young and old through metaphor. “Making a Fist” also bridges generations through individual experience. The poem’s imagery, consonance, and dialogue are immersive and reflective, with an epigraph by Jorge Luis Borges to set the tone of the poem.

Poet Biography

Naomi Shihab Nye is a Palestinian-American writer born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1952 to a Palestinian father and American mother. When she was 14, her family moved to Jerusalem, then Palestine, before settling in San Antonio, Texas. Nye attended Trinity University in San Antonio and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English and world religions.

Nye globally traveled for over 40 years and calls herself a “wandering poet.” Her experiences at home and abroad serve to influence her writing. She works to create diverse poetry, reflecting on the human experiences that cross-culturally intersect. Nye’s work also hones on the ordinary aspects of life. She serves as the Poetry Foundation’s Young People’s Poet Laureate for the 2019-21 term.

Nye has written and edited over 30 volumes of work. She has written children’s novels, essays, short stories, and edited anthologies.

Nye’s various achievements include: four Pushcart Prizes, two Jane Addams Children’s Book Awards, the Paterson Poetry Prize, the Golden Rose Award, the Robert Creeley Prize, and the Betty Prize, the May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecture Award, the Lon Tinkle Award for Lifetime Achievement, and she has been a Lannan Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a Witter Bynner Fellow.

Nye presently works as a professor of creative writing at Texas State University.

Poem Text

Nye, Naomi Shihab. “Making a Fist.” 1988. Poetry Foundation.

Summary

The poem begins with an epigraph by Jorge Luis Borges: “We forget that we are all dead men conversing with dead men” (Epigraph).

The first stanza begins with the speaker describing how she is driving “north of Tampico” (Line 1). For “the first time” (Line 1) she feels like she is dying: “the life sliding out of [her]” (Line 2). She describes the feeling as a “drum” (Line 3) that is getting “harder and harder to hear” (Line 3). The speaker is “seven” (Line 4) years old, “[laying] in the car” (Line 4) looking at the “palm trees swirl” (Line 5) shadows through the “glass” (Line 5) of the car. Her “stomach” (Line 6) feels like “a melon” (Line 6) cut open “inside [her] skin” (Line 6).

The speaker “begs” (Line 8) the question: “How do you know if you’re going to die?” (Line 7) to her mother at the beginning of stanza two. She and her mother “had been travelling for days” (Line 9). The speaker’s mother answers with “strange confidence” (Line 10), explaining that a person knows they’re going to die “when [they] can no longer make a fist” (Line 11).

The third stanza jumps forward in time, with the speaker—now an adult—fondly remembering the trip with her mother. She describes the “borders we must cross separately” (Line 13) which are “stamped with our unanswerable woes” (Line 14). The speaker states that she “did not die” (Line 15) and is “still living” (Line 15). She is “still lying in the backseat” (Line 16) of the car with “all [her] questions” (Line 16), “clenching and opening one small hand” (Line 17).