Making a Fist

“Making a Fist” is written in free verse—a poetic form with no consistent rhyme or meter. The poem has 17 lines divided into three stanzas, with an epigraph at the beginning of the poem.

The form of Nye’s poem can be divided into three parts. The first stanza relates a memory the speaker has of childhood carsickness with vivid, figurative language. In the second stanza, Nye uses dialogue to create a connection between the child and her mother, with one line of dialogue for each person. The stanza centers around generational advice being passed down. Finally, in the third stanza, Nye shifts to the future with abstract, metaphoric lines tying the speaker’s adult self with her child self, exploring the relationship between the past and present.

An epigraph is a quotation at the beginning of a text used to figuratively convey the messages and themes within the work without blatantly stating them. The epigraph at the beginning of “Making a Fist” is a quotation from the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges. It speaks on the mortality surrounding humanity, and how “we forget” (Epigraph) this.