You and Yours

By Naomi Shihab Nye

In You and Yours, Naomi Shihab Nye continues her conversation with ordinary people whose lives become, through her empathetic use of poetic language, extraordinary. Nye writes of local life in her inner-city Texas neighborhood, about rural schools and urban communities she’s visited in this country, as well as the daily rituals of Jews and Palestinians who live in the war-torn Middle East.

The Day

I missed the day
on which it was said
others should not have
certain weapons, but we could.
Not only could, but should,
and do.
I missed that day.
Was I sleeping?
I might have been digging
in the yard,
doing something small and slow
as usual.
Or maybe I wasn’t born yet.
What about all the other people
who aren’t born?
Who will tell them?

Balancing direct language with a suggestive “aslantness,” Nye probes the fragile connection between language and meaning. She never shies from the challenge of trying to name the mysterious logic of childhood or speak truth to power in the face of the horrors of war. She understands our lives are marked by tragedy, inequity, and misunderstanding, and that our best chance of surviving our losses and shortcomings is to maintain a heightened awareness of the sacred in all things.

Naomi Shihab Nye, poet, editor, anthologist, is a recipient of writing fellowships from the Lannan and Guggenheim foundations. Nye’s work has been featured on PBS poetry specials including NOW with Bill Moyers, The Language of Life with Bill Moyers, and The United States of Poetry. She has traveled abroad as a visiting writer on three Arts America tours sponsored by the United States Information Agency. In 2001 she received a presidential appointment to the National Council of the National Endowment for the Humanities. She lives in San Antonio, Texas.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BOA Editions Ltd.
• Release date: Dec 20, 2013
• ISBN: 9781938160394

Naomi Shihab Nye

Naomi Shihab Nye was born in St. Louis, Missouri. Her father was a Palestinian refugee and her mother an American of German and Swiss descent, and she spent her adolescence in both Jerusalem and San Antonio, Texas. She earned her BA from Trinity University in San Antonio. Naomi Shihab Nye describes herself as a “wandering poet.” She has spent more than forty years traveling the country and the world, leading writing workshops and inspiring students of all ages. Naomi Shihab Nye is the author and/or editor of more than thirty books. Her books of poetry for adults and young people include 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East (a finalist for the National Book Award); A Maze Me: Poems for Girls; Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners; Honeybee (winner of the Arab American Book Award); Cast Away: Poems of Our Time (one of the Washington Post’s best books of 2020); Come with Me: Poems for a Journey; and Everything Comes Next: Collected and New Poems. Her other volumes of poetry include Red Suitcase; Words Under the Words; Fuel; Transfer; You & Yours; Mint Snowball; and The Tiny Journalist. Her collections of essays include Never in a Hurry and I’ll Ask You Three Times, Are You Okay?: Tales of Driving and Being Driven. Naomi Shihab Nye has edited nine acclaimed poetry anthologies, including This Same Sky: Poems from Around the World; The Space Between Our Footsteps: Poems from the Middle East; Time You Let Me In: 25 Poets Under 25; and What Have You Lost? Her picture books include Sitti’s Secrets, illustrated by Nancy Carpenter, and her acclaimed fiction includes Habibi; The Turtle of Oman (winner of the Middle East Book Award) and its sequel, The Turtle of Michigan (honorable mention for the Arab American Book Award). Naomi Shihab Nye has been a Lannan Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a Witter Bynner Fellow (Library of Congress). She has received a Lavan Award from the Academy of American Poets, the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award, the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award, the Paterson Poetry Prize, four Pushcart Prizes, the Robert Creeley Award, and ""The Betty,"" from Poets House, for service to poetry, and numerous honors for her children’s literature, including two Jane Addams Children’s Book Awards. In 2011 Nye won the Golden Rose Award given by the New England Poetry Club, the oldest poetry-reading series in the country. Her work has been presented on National Public Radio on A Prairie Home Companion and The Writer’s Almanac. She has been featured on two PBS poetry specials, including The Language of Life with Bill Moyers, and she also appeared on NOW with Bill Moyers. She has been affiliated with the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin for twenty years and served as poetry editor at the Texas Observer for twenty years. In 2019–20 she was the poetry editor for the New York Times Magazine. She is Chancellor Emeritus for the Academy of American Poets and laureate of the 2013 NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature, and in 2017 the American Library Association presented Naomi Shihab Nye with the 2018 May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecture Award. In 2018 the Texas Institute of Letters named her the winner of the Lon Tinkle Award for Lifetime Achievement. She was named the 2019–21 Young People's Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation. In 2020 she was awarded the Ivan Sandrof Award for Lifetime Achievement by the National Book Critics Circle. In 2021 she was voted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Naomi Shihab Nye is professor of creative writing-poetry at Texas State University.

Book preview

The printing of this book was made possible, in part, by a generous donation from the Mary S. Mulligan Charitable Trust

You & Yours

Naomi Shihab Nye

AMERICAN POETS CONTINUUM SERIES, NO. 93

BOA EDITIONS, LTD. ROCHESTER, NY 2005

Copyright © 2005 by Naomi Shihab Nye

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

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Publications by BOA Editions, Ltd. — a not-for-profit corporation under section 501(c)(3) of the United States Internal Revenue Code — are made possible with the assistance of grants from the Literature Program of the New York State Council on the Arts; the Literature Program of the National Endowment for the Arts; the Sonia Raiziss Giop Charitable Foundation; the Lannan Foundation; the Mary S. Mulligan Charitable Trust; the County of Monroe, NY; Rochester Area Community Foundation; the Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation; the Ames-Amzalak Memorial Trust in memory of Henry Ames, Semon Amzalak and Dan Amzalak; the Chadwick-Loher Foundation in honor of Charles Simic and Ray Gonzalez; the Steeple-Jack Fund; the Chesonis Family Foundation, as well as contributions from many individuals nationwide.

See Colophon on page 88 for special individual acknowledgments.

Cover Design: Geri McCormick

Cover Art: Buzzload of Paranoia by Charles Moody, courtesy of the artist

Interior Design and Composition: Scott McCarney

Manufacturing: McNaughton & Gunn, Lithographers

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Nye, Naomi Shihab.

You & yours : poems / by Naomi Shihab Nye.— 1st ed.

p. cm. — (American poets continuum series; v. 93)

ISBN 978-1-929918-69-0 (trade paper: alk. paper) —

ISBN 978-1-938160-39-4 (ebook) —

I. Title. II. Series.

BOA Editions, Ltd.

Nora A. Jones, Executive Director/Publisher

Thom Ward, Editor/Production

Peter Conners, Editor/Marketing

Bernadette Catalan, BOA Board Chair

A. Poulin, Jr., Founder (1938–1996)

250 North Goodman Street, Suite 306

Rochester, NY 14607

www.boaeditions.org

    

With love for Michael, and for Madison, on his way.

And in memory of Daria Donnelly, the best friend poetry (and many people) will ever know.

CONTENTS

Cross that Line

ONE | YOU

Family Land

Fold

Someone I Love

Sewing, Knitting, Crocheting

Last August Hours Before the Year 2000

Frequent Frequent Flyer

Stay

Isle of Mull, Scotland

Pimento

Don Chu Go

Correspondence

Headache

Please Describe How You Became a Writer

Bucket

Clearing

Tell Me About Yourself When You Were 17

Birthday

First Day Without You in 99 Years

Guide

Renovation

Our Time

Fresh

Lives of the Women Poets

Canoeing with Alligators

TWO | YOURS

Dictionary in the Dark

The Day

Your Weight, at Birth

For Mohammed Zeid of Gaza, Age 15

The Story, Around the Corner

During a War

The Sweet Arab, the Generous Arab

Why I Could Not Accept Your Invitation

He Said EYE-RACK

The Wreath that Eats Two Ice Cubes

Peace Pilgrim, You Are Still Walking

The Boy Removes All Traces from his Room

Rico’s Dog

Interview, Saudi Arabia

It is not a game, it was never a game.

The Light that Shines on Us Now

Johnny Carson in Baghdad

I Feel Sorry for Jesus

Mamma is Still About the Same

Working on his Sermon

Music

My Perfect Stranger

I Never Realized They Had Aspirations Like Ours

Truth Serum

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

COLOPHON

Cross that Line

Paul Robeson stood

on the northern border

of the USA

and sang into Canada

where a vast audience

sat on folding chairs

waiting to hear him.

He sang into Canada.

His voice left the USA

when his body was

not allowed to cross

that

Reviews for You and Yours

[candr-4 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

4Q,2P (my VOYA codes)Each poem is a story and a snippet of time. I got lost in some and had a hard time engaging in others. I loved how Nye's writing and tone seemed to change with the poem like in Don Chu Go. The reader in my head even took on the character which enhanced the reading experience. Some poems seemed comprehensible but were steeped in history and culture and were harder to grasp a hold of. I could read through a few and then be completely stopped by one for a lack of understanding or a resonating that required a deep and reflective pause.

[sushiroll-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

3Q 2PPoetry is not an art form that I particularly enjoy. It really depends on the authors of the poems. That being said, I enjoyed Nye's poems though some went over my head. The way Nye uses words to conveys such deep emotions was really surprising and refreshing. Of course, some of her poems may need more than one read to understand the emotions and meaning behind them.

[lomilia · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This poetry collection is full of many things: introspection, political criticism, gardening, crafting, growing up, culture clashes, war, hurt feelings, and even home renovation. It's written in several free verse styles; dense blocks of text, zig-zags that could be read aloud by more than one person, and narrow winding columns. The narration ranges from prim professional ("Why I Could Not Accept Your Invitation"), to clipped back-woods speech ("Canoeing with Alligators") just as natural as can be. Because of the versatile topics, voices and formats I believe this volume is 5Q and a 4P, it has "broad general or genre YA appeal."