After examining Arabic Coffee and The Tray during the in-class writing on Monday and discussing them as a class, I was inspired to dig a little deeper and write a little more. One of the things that I like the most about each of these poems is the simplistic language in which they are written, but the intense meaning and imagery behind them. Even the coffee is simple in Arabic Coffee, “It was never to strong for us: make it blacker Papa, thick in the bottom. . . . . . . . . . . . . boil it to the top again. Two times. No sugar in his pot.” Coffee time in both poems is a time to relax and release the stress of the day. There are no distractions. For me, this can be seen in the simplicity of the coffee. The people at the table are focusing on the coffee and the conversation; not where the cream and sugar are, not whether or not it was made right, or anything like that. The focus was enjoying good conversation and coffee. The coffee cups in each poem are also very simplistic. Each poem describes them the exact same way, “little white cups” carried on a tray “high and balanced on his hands.” Reading this again make me think of feng shui. Everything is balanced and simple. This aesthetic pleasure makes it calming, which coffee time around the table is meant to be for this group of individuals. This idea of balance and simplicity, and possibly the consistency that comes with it, seems to be very important to Nye. She and everyone at the table know exactly what to expect and find comfort in that fact.
Nye takes the time to acknowledge the hard comings that the people at the table may have faced that day, but in a very different manner in each poem. In Arabic Coffee, Nye describes the chaos that could have been that day as “The hundred disappointments, fire swallowing olive-wood beads at the warehouse, and the dreams tucked like pocket handkerchiefs into each day, took their places on the table, near the half-empty dish of corn. And none was more important than the other, and all were guests.” In The Tray, Nye simply states “even on a sorrowing day.” I think that Nye purposely did this. Arabic Coffee has more detail and description than The Tray, and although they are very similar in structure, this is one of the most dominant and noticeable differences for me. The Tray is more streamline and to the point. This could be because of the fact it is more about the silence and connecting without using words, where as Arabic Coffee is about the conversation that comes with coffee time. It is actually starting to seem like there are two completely different reasons for coming together for coffee in each of these poems. Arabic Coffee is starting to seem like more of a normal get together. Less forced and more expected. In The Tray, it seems as if the people came together for a reason, a tragedy. There was no need for words to connect them, because they were all feeling the same pain.
Regardless of the reasoning behind coming together, the point is they did. I think that people in general can relate to the type of coming together or the reason for coming together in both of the poems. It seems that Nye would purposely do this to show that Arabs are like other people and they are all not like the people that flew the planes into the twin towers on September 11, 2001. She is inviting us to their table to display their closeness and ease to us.
I enjoyed and can relate to both of the poems, but for some reason The Tray is much more appealing to me. Even though I was the one most prepared to lose a parent, I was the fortunate one. In three years, four parents were lost. Two of those parents were the mothers of two of my best friends. I feel like this poem explains exactly how we were on the days following their death. We just came together. We did not have to say anything, nothing was forced, and there was comfort in that. We all just came together and supported each other, Chris, and Anthony.
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