in the way a pulley is famous

My second language poem is Famous by Naomi Shihab Nye, which you can find here.

This poem uses language and conventions of language and meaning to make convey its message about the significance of seemingly insignificant things and relationships. When most of us think of the word "famous, we think of things known to a large group of people, of celebrities, of wordly acclaim. Nye takes this connotation and turns it on its head to use it to mean "well-known," but in an intimate sense. In each of the examples given, one object is of superlative significance to the other and the two share an inextricable bond, but this happens so naturally and unassumingly that it doesn't seem special or particularly noteworthy.

The point that Nye wishes to make with this is that the whole world does not need to recognize something for it to be important. She establishes the significance of the everyday and the need to celebrate it. She shares her desire to be "famous" to someone, not in any grand sense or for doing "anything spectacular," but in an everyday way, like a "pulley...or a buttonhole" which "never forgot what it could do."