Classic and Contemporary Poetry: Explained

Naomi Shihab Nye’s "Cape Cod" is a meditation on history, family, loss, and the quiet mysteries that linger in landscapes of memory. The poem moves between past and present, between the names etched into gravestones and the living who walk among them, questioning what it means to inherit both a name and a history.

The poem opens with a catalog of the dead: “The graves of Desire Nye and Patty Nye (1794) / and the two Mehitabels who lived one year each. / William and Ebenezer and Samuel Nye / and the wives and cousins and the one with no hands.” The specificity of the names anchors the poem in real genealogy, while the curious phrase “the one with no hands” introduces a riddle that will thread through the poem, a historical absence that invites speculation. The rhythm of names, repeated and varied, mimics the passage of time, the weight of lineage stretching back into the earth.

The speaker and her companion, likely a relative sharing the Nye surname, are in motion: “Deep, deep in the ground that is cracking. / We jog and skip the ditch. / Your red shirt, your tipped cap.” The juxtaposition of present-day movement against the stillness of graves creates a dynamic contrast—life continuing above ground while the past remains fixed below.

A central moment of reflection emerges: “Is it strange to see your name / on so many stones? I am not alone.” This rhetorical question highlights the disorientation of encountering one’s own name repeatedly in a cemetery, as if history itself is calling out, reminding the living of their connection to those who came before. The phrase “I am not alone” resonates on multiple levels—not just in the company of the addressee, but also in the presence of ancestors, of history pressing close.

The poem then pivots toward a metaphor: “A riddle hangs by a single corner / like a towel pinned on a line. / We forget to bring it in for days. / It barely waves, taking on / the shape of the sea.” The imagery is at once mundane and haunting—an object left unattended, shifting subtly, as if absorbing the landscape around it. This could symbolize forgotten stories, questions left unanswered, or the way history itself drifts just beyond our grasp. The final line of this stanza, “Whose towel was it?” reinforces this sense of uncertainty—who, exactly, are we remembering? What do we owe the past?

From here, the poem expands outward, drawing in the literary and mythic history of Cape Cod: “In the sun a pebble glitters. / A hundred thousand pebbles line the sand / where Henry David Thoreau / ate a giant clam and threw it up.” This image, humorous and vivid, humanizes Thoreau, often mythologized as a transcendental thinker. His presence ties personal history to the broader American literary tradition. The mention of “Ebenezer [who] fell into the mouth of the whale” invokes biblical and maritime narratives, suggesting both Jonah’s story and the perils of 19th-century seafaring life. These references blend personal and cultural memory, reinforcing the poem’s meditation on history as a layered and evolving text.

The mood darkens with the mention of Thoreau’s “gloomiest essay” written after witnessing a shipwreck, “all the ladies floating dead into shore.” The stark image serves as a reminder of mortality, of the fragility of human endeavors. Thoreau’s despair contrasts with the practical endurance of “this other lady with no hands [who] / stayed close to home sewing quilts.” The return to the earlier mystery—the woman without hands—suggests a quiet resilience, a survival that does not require grand voyages but instead works with what is available.

The poem closes with another question, another search for evidence: “How? The riddle blinks. / Tiny green triangles poked nose-to-nose. / We saw them in the house down the road. / Can we find a silver needle in her hem?” The quilt becomes a symbol of continuity, of making do, of assembling scraps of memory into something tangible. The final question invites both curiosity and reverence—can the past truly be stitched together? Can we recover what has been lost, or are we left only with fragments?

In "Cape Cod," Nye blends personal reflection, historical record, and literary allusion to explore the intersections of identity, memory, and place. The poem’s free verse structure allows it to move fluidly between past and present, between specificity and abstraction. Through its shifting images and unanswered questions, it captures the way history lingers—not as something fixed, but as something continually reshaped by those who seek to understand it.

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