16 pages • 32 minutes read
Naomi Shihab NyeValentine for Ernest Mann
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1994A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Role of Poetry in Contemporary Life
An Ars Poetica, “a poem that explains the ‘art of poetry,’ or a meditation on poetry using the form and techniques of a poem” (“Ars Poetica.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/learn/glossary-terms/ars-poetica), is a format poets have employed for centuries, from Roman poet Horace, to Alexander Pope, Wordsworth, and beyond. “Valentine for Ernest Mann” embraces this form, using its stanzas to examine how one can and should experience poetry in life and what kind of impact this experience will have upon the person.
Nye argues that the role of poetry is to allow the reader to see things anew, to look more closely at an object or another person and reconsider or reframe what is beautiful, valuable, and meaningful. She writes “What we have to do / is live in a way that lets us find [poems]” (Lines 12-13): with this line, she places the responsibility on the reader. Poetry cannot exist without humans living in such a way that allows them to discover it. To support this claim, Nye relays the story of the man who gave the pair of skunks as a valentine. In this example, the man “re-invented them / as valentines and they became beautiful” (Lines 21-22). Nye argues that this is what poetry is: the ability to reframe something and discover beauty in its details. The man had been drawn to the skunks’ eyes in particular, and it is out of these eyes that the “poems that had been hiding… for centuries / crawled out” (Lines 23-25). Poetry happens when the reader or writer is able to shed the expectations of the world, like the man for whom “nothing was ugly / just because the world said so” (Lines 19-20). Poetry emerges once a person is able to experience the thing on its own, without preconceived notions or expectations.
The Need for Reinvention
In Nye’s story of the man and the skunks, she writes: “He really / liked those skunks. So, he re-invented them / as valentines and they became beautiful” (Lines 20-22). Nye specifies that the reason the man had any interest in the skunks to begin with was simple: he “really liked” them, and this is reason enough to examine them as a possible font of poetry. It is not enough, though, to simply like something. The man’s act of re-casting the skunks as valentines puts them in a new context, juxtaposing them against typical valentine associations of love and beauty, and in doing so he “re-invented” them (Line 21). Through this act, he re-considered ideals of beauty and the notion of what he would want to share with his partner. Nye points out that “they became beautiful. / At least, to him” (Lines 22-23) in a bit of a humorous aside, after she notes that his wife cried upon receiving the gift. Nye does not think the impulse of the gift was bad; perhaps the wife’s reaction was simply a failure to understand the re-invention of the skunks.
In the final stanza, Nye offers a way forward to living a life full of poetry: “Maybe if we re-invent whatever our lives give us / we find poems” (Lines 26-27). Part of the act of re-invention is a close examination, or an attention to detail. Earlier in the poem, Nye acknowledges that “poems hide” (Line 9) in all sorts of unassuming places. Like the man with the skunks, one must pay attention to the unassuming parts of life looking for the details that hold inherent beauty.
Aesthetics: What is Beautiful Versus What is Ugly
In “Valentine for Ernest Mann,” Nye asks the reader to reexamine what is considered conventionally beautiful or worthy of a poem. She positions the man with the skunks, a person she identifies as “a serious man / who lived in a serious way,” (Lines 18-19) as an example of someone with a clear-minded understanding of beauty, unfettered by cultural norms. By claiming that for him, “Nothing was ugly / just because the world said so,” (Lines 19-20) Nye argues that the only way to access an authentic beauty is to look at the thing (in this case the skunks) clearly without any outside influence.
Nye ends with a subtle plea for empathy, saying that to find poems the reader should not only “check your garage, the odd sock / in your drawer” (Lines 27-28) but also “the person you almost like, but not quite” (Line 28). Like the work she says the reader must do earlier in the poem—“live in a way that lets us find them” (Line 13)—Nye reiterates that finding poetry will not necessarily be easy. The reader must put in the effort of looking, but also the effort of empathizing this “person you almost like” (Line 28).
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By Naomi Shihab Nye
