Nostos

Nostos: analysis

Introduction

Nostos is a short free-verse poem about memory and the place where the speaker grew up. It appears in the collection Meadowlands. The speaker recalls an apple tree, meadows and crocuses from "forty years ago." She then doubts her own memory and notes how the place has changed.

The poem ends with a plain, sweeping claim: "We look at the world once, in childhood." All that follows, it says, is memory. Along the way it questions how far a remembered image can be trusted. It even glances at its own habits, "As one expects of a lyric poet."

Summary

The poem is one stanza. It opens with an apple tree in the yard, "forty years ago." Behind it there were only meadows, with drifts of crocus in the damp grass. The speaker stood at a window in late April. Spring flowers bloomed in the neighbour's yard.

The speaker then asks how many times the tree really flowered on her birthday. She means "the exact day," neither before nor after. She names what memory has done. It is a substitution "of the immutable" for something "shifting, the evolving." It has substituted "the image" for "relentless earth."

Next she asks what she knows of this place now. For decades the tree's role has been "taken by a bonsai." Voices rise from tennis courts. Then, after a dash, come fields and the smell of tall grass, newly cut.

The speaker comments, "As one expects of a lyric poet." The poem closes with two short sentences. We look at the world once, in childhood, and "The rest is memory."

Themes and meaning

The central theme is the unreliability of memory. The speaker wonders whether the tree truly flowered "on my birthday," on "the exact day." She suspects she has fixed a pattern that was never so neat. Memory, she says, puts "the immutable" in place of what is "shifting." A living, changing world is replaced by a still picture.

A second theme is change and loss of place. The meadows and the apple tree are gone. Their "role" is now played by a bonsai, a small, trained, artificial tree. There are tennis courts where there were fields. The present place is suburban and managed, where the past was open land.

A third theme is the poet's awareness of her own craft. Line 22 says "As one expects of a lyric poet." It follows the lush detail of grass "new cut." The line can be read as self-mockery, catching the poem in a familiar lyric move. It shows the speaker watching herself remember.

The last theme is childhood as the only time of true seeing. "We look at the world once, in childhood." Everything after is memory, not direct sight. The title points the same way. A nostos is a homecoming, and the poem shows that one can return only in memory.

Tone

The tone is calm, reflective and quietly sceptical. The speaker begins with a simple scene, almost dreamy. Then the question "How many times, really, did the tree" flower introduces doubt. The word "really" shows her testing her own story.

The middle lines are dry and analytic. Phrases such as "Substitution of the image" sound like a philosopher's notes rather than a lyric. The speaker seems to stand back from her own feelings.

Line 22 adds a note of irony aimed at herself. The ending is plain and final. "The rest is memory" carries a quiet sadness, but the speaker does not lament openly.

Form and structure

The poem is a single stanza of 24 short lines. It is free verse, without rhyme or regular metre. Lines range from 4 to 10 syllables.

The syntax is fragmentary. Many sentences lack main verbs, such as "of crocus in the damp grass" and "Fields." Dashes break the thought in three places, like memory interrupting itself.

Enjambment often splits phrases at unexpected points, as in line 11, which ends on "not." The last two lines are short, complete sentences. Their plainness sets them apart from the broken lines before.

Poetic devices

Imagery line 5

of crocus in the damp grass. A precise spring image fixes the remembered scene in colour and texture.

Rhetorical question line 9

How many times, really, did the tree The question tests memory, and "really" signals doubt about the speaker's own story.

Enjambment line 11

the exact day, not The line breaks on "not," so the qualification hangs before it is completed.

Abstract diction line 13

of the immutable A philosophical word interrupts the concrete scene and names what memory does.

Repetition line 15

Substitution of the image The repeated word stresses that memory replaces reality with a picture.

Symbol line 19

taken by a bonsai The miniature, shaped tree stands for a reduced and controlled version of the old landscape.

Fragment line 21

Fields. Smell of the tall grass, new cut. Verbless phrases mimic memory arriving in flashes of sense.

Irony line 22

As one expects of a lyric poet. The speaker comments on her own poem, mocking the lyric habit of lush detail.

Aphorism line 23

We look at the world once, in childhood. A broad, quotable claim that generalises the poem's private memory.

Caesura line 3

forty years ago -- behind, The dash interrupts the line, mirroring the way memory pauses and corrects itself.

Words worth knowing

Nostos

A Greek word for homecoming, the return home. Readers disagree in the comments about its sense.

immutable

Unchanging. Memory makes the past seem fixed.

bonsai

A tree kept miniature by pruning and training in a pot.

lyric poet

A poet who writes short poems of personal feeling and perception.

What readers have said

• Geri Bloch reads the title as meaning going home. She takes the poem as a meditation on memory that doubts the tree flowered on the birthday. Geri Bloch, 2006
• Janeen Yodakis takes nostos to mean disease, and reads the poem as showing adults' loss of the child's way of noticing as a kind of dis-ease. Janeen YOdakis, 2019
• John Roderick Blyth replies that nostos means return home, the root of the word nostalgia, and links the poem to the book's Odysseus cycle. Mr John Roderick Blyth, 2023
• Aurea Garibaldi praises a reader's analysis and suggests that analysing a poem is a way of rewriting it. Aurea Garibaldi, 2020