Naomi Shihab Nye

Corrigan makes an essential point about Shihab Nye’s poems, “Through caring attention, Shihab Nye acknowledges the dignity and worth of what is small, often against sweeping global, political backdrops.” There’s a dual awareness of near and far—the luck of having a house, of being able to walk down the street without grenades going off, as “Living With It” reminds us, when others elsewhere aren’t so lucky. Sitting down this morning to write this introduction, I teared up, surprising myself, but how could I not, reading these searing poems of resilience in the context of a fragile Gaza ceasefire agreement reached at last. Here are poems written with exquisite care and formalized impatience. Poems focusing on the small matters that daily give life profound meaning punctuate the eloquent poems that express harrowing anguish about both large, ethical issues— “walls and war,” as Shihab Nye writes in “Too Muchness”—as well as closer to home, the grandson thinking of “dad” who’s “gone,” as the speaker acknowledges in “Living With It,” for both of them forever.

These poems are open-ended. They don’t tell us what to think. They speak truth. They wonder out loud. They approach political matters not with a sermon but a question and an open-mind. They speak for children who cannot speak for themselves. They mourn the lost, and find the courage to sing in spite of sorrow.

Finally, I want to point your attention to a matter of craft: in two poems, we see the poet at work, figuring out how to incorporate an amazing phrase, “various venomous,” spoken by a child in her presence, into a poem that does the boy’s piercing insight justice. Shihab Nye was generous enough to send both versions so we could see her process. Sometimes, as here, a poet will repeat a gem of a line or two in different poems to see where it works best. In both poems, the child’s exchange with his grandmother is housed in a larger conversation in the poem. One of the poems asserts the truth a child tells adults simply, forthrightly, so we cannot fudge or avoid answering (sometimes, there is no answer). The other poem unfolds into life-affirming wisdom, as the grandmother suggests the boy lift his eyes, and “Think of this good thing”:

In the openness that Shihab Nye creates in her poems, a space in which questions are asked and thoughts are exchanged, we find a place where peace (which we need) can stir, where we can wait for it to rise (even if we don’t want to wait). I invite you to join me in dwelling with the poems featured here, which Naomi Shihab Nye has permitted Persimmon Tree to publish for the first time.

Floating, acrylic on stretched canvas, by Maro Lorimer

No one talks about overpopulation now,
it’s been replaced by walls, and war.
 
Malvina Reynolds sang “little boxes on a hillside,”
but people kept building them. Stripping the land.
 
It seemed so impressive Malvina started singing in her sixties
and caught on. Never too late.
 
Some days now it feels too late.
Line up for lockdown.
 
A boy wrote “Everything was old
before I was born.”
 
Live with less, carefully placed.
Enjoy the next ten minutes.
 
It does not have to be
more, and more, and more.
 

The children are still singing
They need & want to sing
They are carrying cats to safe places
Holding what they can hold
 
Red hair brown hair yellow
They will wear the sweater
someone threw away
They will hope for something tasty
 
You won’t be able to own them
Their spirits fly to safer worlds
They planted shells in the sand
They never committed a crime
 
A president pardons turkeys
He pardons his own son
He doesn’t pardon children
The children are still singing
 

Baby Jesus prince of peace
is not happy with you people.
I know I promised never to speak
for Jesus again, but it’s urgent.
I’m putting my religion degree
to good use. Americans stringing up
Christmas lights, bang the pans.
Who are you trying
to please and why?
You can’t say you want peace,
then behave this way.
If that were your girl, your boy,
sobbing with baby kitten, tattered blanket,
what would you do next?
Can you think that far?
If you can’t, don’t
celebrate my birthday. I don’t want you
at my party.
 

The boy knows.
He’s only eight, but he can see.
 
The man wants power and money.
That’s all he wants.
 
The boy is distraught, covers his face.
How can this be?
 
How can anyone be elected president
after so many various venomous
 
crimes?
What?
 
I ask his mom,
do you say venomous?
 
She says, never.
The boy knows.
 
He knows a snake, a million bats,
the way some angry cats interact.
 

Cross Country, acrylic on stretched canvas, by Maro Lorimer

When neatnik poet jazzman Roberto left,
you made empty spaces in his memory.
When Rose slipped away, who on earth
could you tell that crazy story to now?
When Kathleen took off in secret,
pretending she wasn’t leaving,
what could you ever believe?
Now who would say, you look bad in that,
take it off? When Sharon, when Wendy…
each friendship its own country
of fun, hope, disarray.
And the question that trails us –
what did we ever give them
for everything they gave?
 

How they accumulate,
creatures from your earlier lives,
schools, hotels, thrown in a box.
Testing them out on the
last day of a year, emptied
of intention except cleansing,
you feel like a cylinder
with a name on its side too,
Old Days, I can’t keep you
around any longer,
so many of you,
goodbye, goodbye, what a luxury,
to pick and choose among
belongings, ending up with a
small fistful of inks,
a new calendar, empty spaces,
a radiant blank.
 

After thirty years,
my high school senior English teacher
returned some of my papers
in a large brown envelope.
Startling mail. Nice comments though.
Her suggestions for improvement
now struck me as profoundly
generous. Please meet me for lunch,
I wrote back. At the seafood dive
she said, Call me Cathy.
So strange – we had become
the same age.
 

I’m not the broken thing.
I’m the shocked thing.
 
I’m the finger on live hot wire,
thrown backwards.
 
I don’t want to do yoga
and meditate on shining my light
 
right now. I know it’s advisable
but also really annoying
 
when you’re just looking
around the restaurant thinking
 
You? You?
You preferred that guy?
 

When the boy says,
I’m thinking about the past
and you ask, what past,
you know he will say “dad”
 
and the day shift into
a lower key, even if wind
is brisk, sky peppered
with clouds you both love best.
 
No way around this. He’s gone
for both of you, but still so present
you ache, turning childhood
pictures over on shelf.
 
When the boy says,
How could anyone be elected
president after so many various venomous
crimes? you laugh, but only
 
for the startle of various venomous
in such a young mouth. Truth is,
unfathomable. How long again
will he be there? He covers his face
 
to hear, Till you’re twelve. Twelve feels
far away when you’re eight.
So, we’re lucky to have houses, right?
Think of this good thing.
 
To walk down streets not fearing
grenades or drones.
We’re lucky to have food and feet,
cats and beds.
 
To stir biscuits in a big white bowl,
then knead them with our hands
and wait for them to rise,
even when we can’t.

A History of Kindness

Poems by Linda Hogan

Poems from Linda Hogan explore new and old ways of experiencing the vagaries of the body and existing in harmony with earth's living beings. Throughout this clear-eyed collection, Hogan tenderly excavates how history instructs the present, and envisions a future alive with hope for a healthy and sustainable world that now wavers between loss and survival. “Hogan remains awed and humble in this sweetly embracing, plangent book of grateful, sorrowful, tender poems wed to the scarred body and ravaged Earth.” —BOOKLIST "In an age as acrimonious as ours, Linda Hogan’s new poetry collection, A History of Kindness, sounds especially poignant." —THE WASHINGTON POST "There is no one like Linda Hogan. I read her poetry to both calm and ignite my heart. A History of Kindness is a series of oracles rising from the page born out of a life of listening, feeling, responding." —TERRY TEMPEST WILLIAMS, author of Erosion Available from Torrey House Press and Bookshop.org

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