Brian Doyle’s prose poem, “Joyas Volardores,” exposes the harsh reality of love’s suffering through the use various animal hearts. The hummingbird was originally given the name “joyas valadoras”, which means “flying jewels”, by the first white explorers in the Americas (Doyle, page 94). Doyle opens his essay with a description of the hummingbird’s heart. He also writes about tortoise, blue whale, and human hearts. The final paragraph of the piece pulls all of the writer’s examples together in order to prove a claim. In, “Joyas Volardores,” Doyle expresses the idea for one to keep their heart open because heartbreak makes one weak but love is necessary for life.

Doyle chooses to use extremely powerful words in order to get across the overall message to readers. He selects hummingbirds and blue whales as the central non-human animals for this piece. Hummingbirds and blue whales possess qualities that make them extremely different, both from each other and from the majority other creatures. Hummingbird hearts are the size of a pencil eraser, and the blue whale has the largest heart, “as big as a room” (Doyle, pages 94-95). The descriptions of these creatures are very detailed. Hummingbirds have “incredible enormous immense ferocious metabolisms” and “race-car hearts that eat oxygen at an eye-popping rate” (Doyle, page 95). The writing style is composed of many unique choices made by Doyle that allow the reader to gain a strong understanding of why people are meant to live and feel very deeply. He writes, “It’s expensive to fly. You burn out. You fry the machine. You melt the engine.”. Breaking apart ideas in choppy sentences emphasizes his ideas conveyed, concerning living a life so close to death. There are many differences in the way he describes human hearts and hearts of non-human animals. Doyle writes, “You can brick up your heart as stout and tight and hard and cold and impregnable as you possibly can and down it comes in an instant”. The writer strives to teach his readers not to build up a wall because living consists of ups and downs. One is to keep moving forward despite all of the heart-wrenching pain he or she has experienced in the past. Selecting extremely precise words helps increase the impact of “Joyas Volardores” on the reader.

The hearts described by the poet also create a strong impact on the reader due to their symbolism. Doyle writes, “…if they are not soon warmed, if they do not soon find that which is sweet, their hearts grow cold, and they cease to be.”. Referencing hummingbird hearts, Doyle elaborates upon a representation of human nature through the concept that humans crave attention and need love to survive. The hearts of the hummingbirds and blue whales serve as a representation of hearts in general. As for blue whales, “animals with the largest hearts in the world generally travel in pairs, and their penetrating moaning cries, their piercing yearning tongue, can be heard underwater for miles and miles” (Doyle, pages 95-96). All creatures, including humans, have a want and a need for happiness and love. The poet goes on and identifies the amount of chambers in the hearts of mammals and birds, reptiles and turtles, fish, insects and mollusks, worms, and even unicellular bacteria (Doyle, page 96). Doyle makes it very evident that he isn’t simply referring to the hearts of hummingbirds and blue whales. He writes, “Every creature on earth has approximately two billion heartbeats to spend in a lifetime. You can spend them slowly, like a tortoise and live to be two hundred years old, or you can spend them fast, like a hummingbird, and live to be two years old.”. Symbolic meanings of hearts in the essay are different from their literal sense.

An intense tone is used in, “Joyas Volardores”, especially in the final paragraph. This essay is ultimately about all animal hearts, not solely hummingbird, blue whale, and human hearts. Doyle draws the reader into the reality that “we all churn inside (Doyle, page 96). He shifts, at the end, to describing human hearts. Doyle writes, “So much held in a heart in a lifetime. So much held in a heart in a day, an hour, a moment. We are utterly open with no one in the end”. This essay encompasses the general idea: in the end, one only has him or herself. One cannot rely on others for happiness because it must come from within. As humans, “we open windows to each but we live alone in the house of the heart” (Doyle, page 96). This powerful message is exposed by the writer’s tone. Doyle writes that one’s wall protecting his or her heart falls by, “a woman’s second glance, a child’s apple breath, the shatter of glass in the road, the words I have something to tell you, a cat with a broken spine dragging itself into the forest to die, the brush of your mother’s papery ancient hand in the thicket of your hair, the memory of your father’s voice early in the morning echoing from the kitchen where he is making pancakes for his children.”. One needs to fully experience the lows in order to appreciate the highs. Humans are not meant to hide from and completely avoid all pain that is thrown at or exposed to them. The attitude of the author aids in giving substance to the claim that heartbreak doesn’t make one stronger because it’s a natural feeling and experience of all living creatures, whether referring to physical or emotional harm to the heart.

The truth behind the pain of love is captured perfectly in Doyle’s short essay, “Joyas Volardores”. One cannot escape the emotions felt after reading the final paragraph in this powerful piece. True love exists in spite of pain and heartbreak. One isn’t destined to close their heart out, especially to what makes life worth it.