Another Nye poem found by Ryan

Famous

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BY NAOMI SHIHAB NYE

The river is famous to the fish. 

The loud voice is famous to silence,   

which knew it would inherit the earth   

before anybody said so.   

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds   

watching him from the birdhouse.   

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.   

The idea you carry close to your bosom   

is famous to your bosom.   

The boot is famous to the earth,   

more famous than the dress shoe,   

which is famous only to floors. 

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it   

and not at all famous to the one who is pictured.   

I want to be famous to shuffling men   

who smile while crossing streets,   

sticky children in grocery lines,   

famous as the one who smiled back. 

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,   

or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,   

but because it never forgot what it could do.

Blood -- the true version with correct stanzas

Blood

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BY NAOMI SHIHAB NYE

“A true Arab knows how to catch a fly in his hands,” 

my father would say. And he’d prove it, 

cupping the buzzer instantly 

while the host with the swatter stared. 

In the spring our palms peeled like snakes. 

True Arabs believed watermelon could heal fifty ways. 

I changed these to fit the occasion. 

Years before, a girl knocked, 

wanted to see the Arab. 

I said we didn’t have one. 

After that, my father told me who he was, 

“Shihab”—“shooting star”— 

a good name, borrowed from the sky. 

Once I said, “When we die, we give it back?” 

He said that’s what a true Arab would say. 

Today the headlines clot in my blood. 

A little Palestinian dangles a truck on the front page. 

Homeless fig, this tragedy with a terrible root 

is too big for us. What flag can we wave? 

I wave the flag of stone and seed, 

table mat stitched in blue. 

I call my father, we talk around the news. 

It is too much for him, 

neither of his two languages can reach it. 

I drive into the country to find sheep, cows, 

to plead with the air: 

Who calls anyone civilized? 

Where can the crying heart graze? 

What does a true Arab do now? 

Nye letter

Letter from Naomi Shihab Nye, Arab-American Poet:

To Any Would-Be Terrorists

I am sorry I have to call you that, but I don't know how else to get your attention.  I hate that word.  Do you know how hard some of us have worked to get rid of that word, to deny its instant connection to the Middle East? And now look.  Look what extra work we have.  Not only did your colleagues kill thousands of innocent, international people in those buildings and scar their families forever, they wounded a huge community of people in the Middle East, in the United States and all over the world.  If that's what they wanted to do, please know the mission was a terrible success, and you can stop now.

Because I feel a little closer to you than many Americans could possibly feel, or ever want to feel,  I insist that you listen to me.  Sit down and listen.  I know what kinds of foods you like. I would feed them to you if you were right here, because it is very very important that you listen.  I am humble in my country's pain and I am furious.

My Palestinian father became a refugee in 1948. He came to the United States as a college student. He is 74 years old now and still homesick. He has planted fig trees. He has invited all the Ethiopians in his neighborhood to fill their little paper sacks with his figs. He has written columns and stories saying the Arabs are not terrorists, he has worked all his life to defy that word. Arabs are businessmen and students and kind neighbors.  There is no one like him and there are thousands like him - gentle Arab daddies who make everyone laugh around the dinner table, who have a hard time with headlines, who stand outside in the evenings with their hands in their pockets staring toward the far horizon.

I am sorry if you did not have a father like that.  I wish everyone could have a father like that.

My hard-working American mother has spent 50 years trying to convince her fellow teachers and choir mates not to believe stereotypes about the Middle East. She always told them, there is a much larger story. If you knew the story, you would not jump to conclusions from what you see in the news. But now look at the news. What a mess has been made.  Sometimes I wish everyone could have parents from different countries or ethnic groups so they would be forced to cross boundaries, to believe in mixtures, every day of their lives.   Because this is what the world calls us to do. WAKE UP!

The Palestinian grocer in my Mexican-American neighborhood paints pictures of the Palestinian flag on his empty cartons.  He paints trees and rivers. He gives his paintings away. He says, "Don't insult me" when I try to pay him for a lemonade. Arabs have always been famous for their generosity. Remember? My half-Arab brother with an Arabic name looks more like an Arab than many full-blooded Arabs do and he has to fly every week.

My Palestinian cousins in Texas have beautiful brown little boys. Many of them haven't gone to school yet. And now they have this heavy word to carry in their backpacks along with the weight of their papers and books. I repeat, the mission was a terrible success. But it was also a complete, total tragedy and I want you to think about a few things.

1. Many people, thousands of people, perhaps even millions of people, in the United States are very aware of the long unfairness of our country's policies regarding Israel and Palestine. We talk about this all the time. It exhausts us and we keep talking. We write letters to newspapers, to politicians, to each other.  We speak out in public even when it is uncomfortable to do so, because that is our responsibility. Many of these people aren't even Arabs. Many happen to be Jews who are equally troubled by the inequity. I promise you this is true. Because I am Arab-American, people always express these views to me and I am amazed how many understand the intricate situation and have strong, caring feelings for Arabs and Palestinians even when they don't have to. Think of them, please: All those people who have been standing up for Arabs when they didn't have to. But as ordinary citizens we don't run the government and don't get to make all our government's policies, which makes us sad sometimes.  We believe in the power of the word and we keep using it, even when it seems no one large enough is listening. That is one of the best things about this country: the free power of free words. Maybe we take it for granted too much. Many of the people killed in the World Trade Center probably believed in a free Palestine and were probably talking about it all the time.

But this tragedy could never help the Palestinians. Somehow, miraculously, if other people won't help them more, they are going to have to help themselves.  And it will be peace, not  violence, that fixes things. You could ask any one of the kids in the Seeds of Peace organization and they would tell you that. Do you ever talk to kids? Please, please, talk to more kids.

2. Have you noticed how many roads there are? Sure you have. You must check out maps and highways and small alternate routes just like anyone else. There is no way everyone on earth could travel on the same road, or believe in exactly the same religion. It would be too crowded, it would be dumb. I don't believe you want us all to be Muslims. My Palestinian grandmother lived to be 106 years old, and did not read or write, but even she was much smarter than that. The only place she ever went beyond Palestine and Jordan was to Mecca, by bus, and she was very proud to be called a Hajji and to wear white clothes afterwards. She worked very hard to get stains out of everyone's dresses -- scrubbing them with a stone.  I think she would consider the recent tragedies a terrible stain on her religion and her whole part of the world. She would weep. She was scared of airplanes anyway. She wanted people to worship God in whatever ways they felt comfortable. Just worship. Just remember God in every single day and doing. It didn't matter what they called it.  When people asked her how she felt about the peace talks that were happening right before she died, she puffed up like a proud little bird and said, in Arabic, "I never lost my peace inside." To her, Islam was a welcoming religion. After her home in Jerusalem was stolen from her, she lived in a small village that contained a Christian shrine. She felt very tender toward the people who would visit it.   A Jewish professor tracked me down a few years ago in Jerusalem to tell me she changed his life after he went to her village to do an oral history project on Arabs. "Don't think she only mattered to you!" he said. "She gave me a whole different reality to imagine - yet it was amazing how close we became. Arabs could never be just a "project" after that."

Did you have a grandmother or two?  Mine never wanted people to be pushed around. What did yours want?  Reading about Islam since my grandmother died, I note the "tolerance" that was "typical of Islam" even in the old days. The Muslim leader Khalid ibn al-Walid signed a Jerusalem treaty which declared, "in the name of God, you have complete security for your churches which shall not be occupied by the Muslims or destroyed." It is the new millenium in which we should be even smarter than we used to be, right? But I think we have fallen behind.

3. Many Americans do not want to kill any more innocent people anywhere in the world. We are extremely worried about military actions killing innocent people. We didn't like this in Iraq, we never liked it anywhere. We would like no more violence, from us as well as from you. HEAR US!  We would like to stop the terrifying wheel of violence, just stop it, right on the road, and find something more creative to do to fix these huge problems we have. Violence is not creative, it is stupid and scary and many of us hate all those terrible movies and TV shows made in our own country that try to pretend otherwise.  Don't watch them. Everyone should stop watching them.  An appetite for explosive sounds and toppling buildings is not a healthy thing for anyone in any country. The USA should apologize to the whole world for sending this trash out into the air and for paying people to make it.

But here's something good you may not know - one of the best-selling books of poetry in the United States in recent years is the Coleman Barks translation of Rumi, a mystical Sufi poet of the 13th century, and Sufism is Islam and doesn't that make you glad?

Everyone is talking about the suffering that ethnic Americans are going through. Many will no doubt go through more of it, but I would like to thank everyone who has sent me a consolation card. Americans are usually very kind people. Didn't your colleagues find that out during their time living here? It is hard to imagine they missed it. How could they do what they did, knowing that?

4. We will all die soon enough. Why not take the short time we have on this delicate planet and figure out some really interesting things we might do together?  I promise you, God would be happier. So many people are always trying to speak for God - I know it is a very dangerous thing to do. I tried my whole life not to do it. But this one time is an exception. Because there are so many people crying and scarred and confused and complicated and exhausted right now - it is as if we have all had a giant simultaneous break-down.  I beg you, as your distant Arab cousin, as your American neighbor, listen to me. Our hearts are broken, as yours may also feel broken in some ways we can't understand, unless you tell us in words.  Killing people won't tell us. We can't read that message. Find another way to live.  Don't expect others to be like you.  Read Rumi.  Read Arabic poetry. Poetry humanizes us in a way that news, or even religion, has a harder time doing. A great Arab scholar, Dr. Salma Jayyusi, said, "If we read one another, we won't kill one another."  Read American poetry.   Plant mint.  Find a friend who is so different from you, you can't believe how much you have in common. Love them. Let them love you. Surprise people in gentle ways, as friends do. The rest of us will try harder too. Make our family proud.

naomi shihab nye 

The Importance of Literature/Poetry/Writing

Here is a quote from Naomi Shihab Nye (but it also relates to Emily Dickinson):

“Why should it be a surprise that people find solace in literature? Literature slows us down, cherishes small details.…We need literature for nourishment and noticing, for the way language and imagery reach comfortably into experience, holding and connecting it to ourselves.”

Poetic Terms

On the portal, I posted a partial list of poetic terms you might want to review.

I also found an easy explanation of alliteration, consonance, and assonance online here:

http://www.writingrhymeandmeter.com/rhyme/208-consonance-assonance-alliteration/

Emily Dickinson's Death Obsession

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Because I could not stop for Death – 

He kindly stopped for me – 

The Carriage held but just Ourselves – 

And Immortality. 

We slowly drove – He knew no haste 

And I had put away 

My labor and my leisure too, 

For His Civility – 

We passed the School, where Children strove 

At Recess – in the Ring – 

We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain – 

We passed the Setting Sun – 

Or rather – He passed Us – 

The Dews drew quivering and Chill – 

For only Gossamer, my Gown – 

My Tippet – only Tulle – 

We paused before a House that seemed 

A Swelling of the Ground – 

The Roof was scarcely visible – 

The Cornice – in the Ground – 

Since then – 'tis Centuries – and yet 

Feels shorter than the Day 

I first surmised the Horses' Heads 

Were toward Eternity –

More poems by Emily Dickinson

1.

After a hundred years
Nobody knows the place,--
Agony, that enacted there,
Motionless as peace.

Weeds triumphant ranged,
Strangers strolled and spelled
At the lone orthography
Of the elder dead.

Winds of summer fields
Recollect the way,--
Instinct picking up the key
Dropped by memory. 




2.  

"Nature" is what we see—
The Hill—the Afternoon—
Squirrel—Eclipse— the Bumble bee—
Nay—Nature is Heaven—
Nature is what we hear—
The Bobolink—the Sea—
Thunder—the Cricket—
Nay—Nature is Harmony—
Nature is what we know—
Yet have no art to say—
So impotent Our Wisdom is
To her Simplicity. 





3.


There is no Frigate like a Book

To take us Lands away, 

Nor any Coursers like a Page 

Of prancing Poetry – 

This Traverse may the poorest take 

Without oppress of Toll – 

How frugal is the Chariot 

That bears a Human soul.

"Hope is the Thing with Feathers"

Emily Dickinson

Here is a link to a biography of Emily Dickinson:

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/emily-dickinson

You may also wish to read some of the critical analysis essays about this poet, some contained on the above website (www.poetryfoundation.org) or others that you can find on other sites.

Many of Emily Dickinson's poems can also be found as audio files, read by others, so if you are interested in listening to them read aloud, search for the audio versions. Her poetry has often been adapted into songs as well, and they may be easier to memorize as songs, so we can find some of those versions as well.

Here are the first three poems we will look at by this poet:

“Hope” is the thing with feathers - 

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“Hope” is the thing with feathers - 

That perches in the soul - 

And sings the tune without the words - 

And never stops - at all - 

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard - 

And sore must be the storm - 

That could abash the little Bird 

That kept so many warm - 

I’ve heard it in the chillest land - 

And on the strangest Sea - 

Yet - never - in Extremity, 

It asked a crumb - of me.

A narrow fellow in the grass 

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A narrow fellow in the grass 

Occasionally rides; 

You may have met him—did you not 

His notice sudden is, 

The grass divides as with a comb, 

A spotted shaft is seen, 

And then it closes at your feet, 

And opens further on.

He likes a boggy acre,   

A floor too cool for corn,

But when a boy and barefoot, 

I more than once at noon 

Have passed, I thought, a whip lash, 

Unbraiding in the sun, 

When stooping to secure it, 

It wrinkled and was gone. 

Several of nature’s people 

I know, and they know me;

I feel for them a transport 

Of cordiality. 

But never met this fellow, 

Attended or alone, 

Without a tighter breathing, 

And zero at the bone.

I dwell in Possibility – 

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I dwell in Possibility – 

A fairer House than Prose – 

More numerous of Windows – 

Superior – for Doors – 

Of Chambers as the Cedars – 

Impregnable of eye – 

And for an everlasting Roof 

The Gambrels of the Sky – 

Of Visitors – the fairest – 

For Occupation – This – 

The spreading wide my narrow Hands 

To gather Paradise –

Poem Set #2

The Words Under the Words

for Sitti Khadra, north of Jerusalem

My grandmother’s hands recognize grapes,   

the damp shine of a goat’s new skin.   

When I was sick they followed me,

I woke from the long fever to find them   

covering my head like cool prayers.

My grandmother’s days are made of bread,   

a round pat-pat and the slow baking.

She waits by the oven watching a strange car   

circle the streets. Maybe it holds her son,   

lost to America. More often, tourists,   

who kneel and weep at mysterious shrines.   

She knows how often mail arrives,

how rarely there is a letter.

When one comes, she announces it, a miracle,   

listening to it read again and again

in the dim evening light.

My grandmother’s voice says nothing can surprise her.

Take her the shotgun wound and the crippled baby.   

She knows the spaces we travel through,   

the messages we cannot send—our voices are short   

and would get lost on the journey.

Farewell to the husband’s coat,

the ones she has loved and nourished,

who fly from her like seeds into a deep sky.   

They will plant themselves. We will all die.

My grandmother’s eyes say Allah is everywhere, even in death.   

When she talks of the orchard and the new olive press,   

when she tells the stories of Joha and his foolish wisdoms,   

He is her first thought, what she really thinks of is His name.

“Answer, if you hear the words under the words—

otherwise it is just a world with a lot of rough edges,   

difficult to get through, and our pockets full of stones.”

Naomi Shihab Nye, “The Words Under the Words” from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (Portland, Oregon: Far Corner Books, 1995).

Two Countries

Skin remembers how long the years grow
when skin is not touched, a gray tunnel
of singleness, feather lost from the tail
of a bird, swirling onto a step,
swept away by someone who never saw
it was a feather. Skin ate, walked,
slept by itself, knew how to raise a 
see-you-later hand. But skin felt
it was never seen, never known as
a land on the map, nose like a city,
hip like a city, gleaming dome of the mosque
and the hundred corridors of cinnamon and rope.

Skin had hope, that’s what skin does.
Heals over the scarred place, makes a road.
Love means you breathe in two countries.
And skin remembers--silk, spiny grass,
deep in the pocket that is skin’s secret own.
Even now, when skin is not alone,
it remembers being alone and thanks something larger
that there are travelers, that people go places
larger than themselves.

Blood

BY NAOMI SHIHAB NYE



“A true Arab knows how to catch a fly in his hands,”   

my father would say. And he’d prove it,

cupping the buzzer instantly

while the host with the swatter stared.

In the spring our palms peeled like snakes.

True Arabs believed watermelon could heal fifty ways.   

I changed these to fit the occasion.

Years before, a girl knocked,

wanted to see the Arab.

I said we didn’t have one.

After that, my father told me who he was,   

“Shihab”—“shooting star”—

a good name, borrowed from the sky.

Once I said, “When we die, we give it back?”   

He said that’s what a true Arab would say.

Today the headlines clot in my blood.

A little Palestinian dangles a truck on the front page.   

Homeless fig, this tragedy with a terrible root   

is too big for us. What flag can we wave?

I wave the flag of stone and seed,

table mat stitched in blue.

I call my father, we talk around the news.   

It is too much for him,

neither of his two languages can reach it.

I drive into the country to find sheep, cows,   

to plead with the air:

Who calls anyone civilized?





Where can the crying heart graze?

What does a true Arab do now?


Naomi Shihab Nye, “Blood” from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems

Poem Set #1

My Father and the Fig Tree

 For other fruits, my father was indifferent.
He'd point at the cherry trees and say,
 "See those? I wish they were figs."
In the evening he sat by my bed
weaving folktales like vivid little scarves.
They always involved a figtree.
 Even when it didn't fit, he'd stick it in.
Once Joha was walking down the road
and he saw a fig tree.
 Or, he tied his camel to a fig tree and went to sleep.
Or, later when they caught and arrested him,
his pockets were full of figs.

At age six I ate a dried fig and shrugged.
"That's not what I'm talking about! he said,
"I'm talking about a fig straight from the earth –
gift of Allah! -- on a branch so heavy
it touches the ground.
I'm talking about picking the largest, fattest,
sweetest fig
in the world and putting it in my mouth."
(Here he'd stop and close his eyes.)

Years passed, we lived in many houses,
none had figtrees.
 We had lima beans, zucchini, parsley, beets.
"Plant one!" my mother said.
 But my father never did.
 He tended garden half-heartedly, forgot to water,
let the okra get too big.
"What a dreamer he is. Look how many things
he starts and doesn't finish."

The last time he moved, I got a phone call,
My father, in Arabic, chanting a song
I'd never heard. "What's that?"
He took me out back to the new yard.
There, in the middle of Dallas, Texas,
a tree with the largest, fattest,
sweetest fig in the world.
"It's a figtree song!" he said,
 plucking his fruits like ripe tokens,
 emblems, assurance
of a world that was always his own.

 -Naomi Shihab Nye

 from 19 VARIETIES OF GAZELLE

* Joha - A trickster figure in Palestinian folktales

Arabic Coffee

It was never too strong for us:
make it blacker, Papa,
thick in the bottom,
tell again how the years will gather
in small white cups,
how luck lives in a spot of grounds.

Leaning over the stove, he let it
boil to the top, and down again.
Two times. No sugar in his pot.
And the place where men and women
break off from one another
was not present in that room.
The hundred disappointments,
fire swallowing olive-wood beads
at the warehouse, and the dreams
tucked like pocket handkerchiefs
into each day, took their places
on the table, near the half-empty
dish of corn. And none was
more important than the others,
and all were guests. When
he carried the tray into the room,
high and balanced in his hands,
it was an offering to all of them,
stay, be seated, follow the talk
wherever it goes. The coffee was
the center of the flower.
Like clothes on a line saying
you will live long enough to wear me,
a motion of faith. There is this,
and there is more.

My Grandmother in the Stars

It is possible we will not meet again
on earth. To think this fills my throat
with dust. Then there is only the sky
tying the universe together.

Just now the neighbor’s horse must be standing
patiently, hoof on stone, waiting for his day
to open. What you think of him,
and the village’s one heroic cow,
is the knowledge I wish to gather.
I bow to your rugged feet,
the moth-eaten scarves that knot your hair.

Where we live in the world
is never one place. Our hearts,
those dogged mirrors, keep flashing us
moons before we are ready for them.
You and I on a roof at sunset,
our two languages adrift,
heart saying, Take this home with you,
never again,
and only memory making us rich.

E Group 3 Notes

1. Select a passage from a novel you have chosen to study where the appearance of a character in a specific setting raises unsettling questions for the reader. Outline how you would stage this appearance and setting for an audience, paying particular attention to elements of intrigue and/or surprise.
Scene: → ancient whale strands on the beach
 Why is this important:
● Two worlds collide
○ Family and whales
● Whale is both magical and real (Godly and normal)
● Whale strands himself on purpose to kill himself because he can’t let go of the past (with the whale rider)
Staging:
● First: Village
●  Actors in village point at audience (open sea/beach) say that whale has stranded
● Second: Beach
● The whale consists of just a tale which sticks out stage right, it is big
● Actors are around the tale try to drag it into the water
● Third:
● Whale moves (tale offstage) towards open sea (audience) actors sow direction to audience by pointing
● Kahu follows the way they point, walks up center aisle­ spotlight on her till blackout
2. Select a passage from a novel you have chosen to study in which the shifting moods of the characters involved combine to create a pivotal scene in the narrative. Discuss how you would stage this scene for an audience paying particular attention to the role of the actors.
Scene: after Kahu left with the whale and her grandfather realizes he had been looking for her all along
Setting:
● Beach, audience is open sea/ocean
● At the beach are Koro, Nanny Flowers, Rawiri, boys villager
Scene:
● this scene is right after the one for question one, Kahu has just gone into the water and left with the whale
● in this scene Koro’s mood and his attitude towards Kahu change as he realizes the is the successor he has been searching, the mood change is shown most clear when Nanny Flowers hands him the stone that Kahu has dived for
● before Kahu has left there is total pandemonium on stage as everyone is trying their best to help the stranded whale
● when she leaves they call after her and Rawiri tries to run/ after her (again the sea is the center aisle)
● after Kahu left Nanny Flowers is devastated she blames Koro because she believes that
Kahu only took the risk because she wants to prove herself to him
● Koro is hesitant until Nanny Flowers shows him the stone then you can clearly see a mood change in terms of facial expression
○ first realization­Koro notices that Kahu is the person he has been looking for for so long 
○ then consternation as he realizes the full extent of his mistake