When you think of a transformation, you most likely envision something physical. At the very least, you imagine something observable. But many types of transformations—from beauty to kindness to change itself—are hidden within our own minds. How can this be possible? The meanings of concepts aren’t static: they can differ from individual to individual as well as within a single individual over a lifetime, thereby transforming them. Naomi Shihab Nye investigates these conceptual transformations in her poems, notably in “Valentine for Ernest Mann”, “Trying to Name What Doesn’t Change”, and “Kindness”.

“Valentine for Ernest Mann” details the transformation of the ugly or mundane into the beautiful and poetic. “Valentine for Ernest Mann” is an ars poetica: a poem about the nature of poetry. In Nye’s view, poems are not creations or products, they are ideas, which are independent of any one person. In response to a request for a poem, Nye writes: “I’ll tell a secret instead: / poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes, / they are sleeping.” (Nye, “Valentine for Ernest Mann” 8–10). Bottoms of shoes are filled with traditionally disgusting things that are picked up from the ground and accumulated from your feet—dirt, grime, lint, sweat—yet Nye labels this place as where a poem can lie. A poem isn’t necessarily beautiful in its diction or its tone (it certainly can be), but it is beautiful in its insight or in its way to communicate ideas in unintuitive ways. Nye is presenting the idea that beauty can only arise from one’s own perception. In other words, Nye is arguing that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

In a more concrete example within this poem, Nye details a man she knew who gave a pair of skunks to his disapproving wife for Valentine’s Day (Nye, “Valentine for Ernest Mann” 14). The man is clearly an independent thinker, as Nye notes that, to him, “Nothing was ugly / just because the world said so” (Nye, “Valentine for Ernest Mann” 19–20). Skunks notoriously have a putrid odor and are generally not considered among the cutest animals, but what caught the attention of the man were the skunks’ eyes. They remain the same animals physically, but the skunks transformed through two different people focusing on two different attributes. A skunk’s smell may be their most immediately noticeable attribute, but by valuing the skunks for more than that, the man was able to find a hidden beauty. Nye also implies that the man viewed the new purpose of the skunks as an additional source of beauty: “He re-invented them / as valentines and they became beautiful. / At least, to him.” (Nye, “Valentine for Ernest Mann” 21–23). Although the prerequisite to this thought is the view that the skunks are in some way beautiful, the act of giving away these animals as an act of love added another dimension of beauty to them.

Similarly, “Trying to Name What Doesn’t Change” presents the idea of transforming objects through their perceived purposes. The poem presents a dichotomy between the opinions of Roselva and Peter regarding the question of if train tracks change. The two do differ in their opinions of whether the tracks differ physically. Roselva argues that a track she observed for three years “doesn’t curve, doesn’t break, doesn’t grow” (Nye, “Trying to Name What Doesn’t Change” 6). On the other hand, when Peter discovered an abandoned track in Mexico, he observed that “The metal wasn’t shiny anymore. / The wood was split and some of the ties were gone” (Nye, “Trying to Name What Doesn’t Change” 9–10). But in addition to these physical changes, Peter also appears to claim that, by being abandoned, the track was changed in a more fundamental, non-physical way; he “says a track without a train / is a changed track” (Nye, “Trying to Name What Doesn’t Change” 8–9). Although it is implied that the removal of the tracks’ function led to the physical changes that Peter observed, Nye is also conveying the idea that an object’s purpose itself transforms it.

The poem more generally aims to determine the nature of change itself, but Nye does not give any sort of definitive answer; rather, she provides several perspectives. The image of the “widow in the tilted house” (Nye, “Trying to Name What Doesn’t Change” 13) is utilized to represent the constancy of solitary living; the only spice—both literally and figuratively—in her present life appears to be the cinnamon she puts in her soup (Nye, “Trying to Name What Doesn’t Change” 14). By instructing the reader to “ask her what doesn’t change” (Nye, “Trying to Name What Doesn’t Change” 15), Nye communicates to the reader that change is a subjective phenomenon, not an objective one. The stanza following the instruction to ask the widow what doesn’t change is the widow’s answer: death doesn’t change. With the experience of losing a loved one, the widow is able to find that even the stars in the night sky, what we imagine to be constants, will eventually display their deaths with brilliant supernovas; “Stars explode” (Nye, “Trying to Name What Doesn’t Change” 16). Roselva likely doesn’t have the experience to fully comprehend such a concept, as she thinks that having watched a train track for over “for three years” (Nye, “Trying to Name What Doesn’t Change” 5) is long enough to observe a dramatic change. Peter appears to be in the stage of life where he is catching on to this idea, as he identifies that the track losing its train may be a major transformation, but he still “isn’t sure” (Nye, “Trying to Name What Doesn’t Change” 7). But the widow, with her greater experience than either Peter or Roselva, views the world, and the concept of change, through a vastly different lens.

“Kindness” details how one learns, also through experience, “what kindness really is” (Nye, “Kindness” 1). Nye illustrates this journey through three realizations, each ruling one stanza. In the first example, Nye describes the realization of loss: “feel the future dissolve in a moment” (Nye, “Kindness” 3). The future that Nye is describing is the trajectory and predictability originating from one’s hard work. When this is lost, one is dragged to the lowest point of human existence, dragged to a state of hopelessness and desperation. Nye describes,

After this, Nye describes the realization of empathy: “you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho / lies dead by the side of the road. / You must see how this could be you,” (Nye, “Kindness” 15–17). Nye isn’t describing an innate, rudimentary type of empathy; rather, she describes a learned, extreme type of empathy. The reader is only allowed to witness one moment, the final moment, of a person’s life—the Indian very well may have lived a very different life—and yet the reader is still able to put themself in their position. And thirdly, she describes the realization that kindness is the mirror image of sorrow: “Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, / you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing” (Nye, “Kindness” 21–22). In recognizing that kindness is the antidote to sorrow, she is emphasizing that although kindness is an action, the experience of sorrow is necessary to understanding it.

But instead of transforming by moving through the perspectives of multiple people with steadfast opinions like in previous examples, “Kindness” primarily focuses on the transformation of an idea within a single individual, specifically the reader. The poem is in a second-person perspective, instructing the reader on how they can—or perhaps how they will—learn what kindness is. But it is also important to note the transfer of this knowledge to the reader is not without origin, it comes from the speaker of the poem. So not only does the idea of kindness transform intrapersonally, through one’s own experience, it also transforms interpersonally, between the speaker who has lived through these experiences and the reader who has not.

In each of these three poems, Nye explores the transformation of a different idea. In “Valentine for Ernest Mann”, Nye explores beauty; in “Trying to Name What Doesn’t Change”, she explores change; and in “Kindness”, she explores kindness. Through her poetry, Naomi Shihab Nye reveals how—through our individual opinions, experiences, and perspectives—humans have the power to transform how we view our surroundings.