Trailing Smoke of Stories

~Naomi Shihab Nye~

Dana Rafferty, Christina Yerdon, Meagan Davis, Nicky Fraebel

“For me the primary source of poetry has always been local life,

random characters met on the streets, our own ancestry sifting

down to us through small essential daily tasks.”

Biography

Half and HalfYou can't be, says a Palestinian Christianon the first feast day after Ramadan.So, half-and-half and half-and-half.He sells glass. He knows about broken bits,chips. If you love Jesus you can't loveanyone else. Says he.

At his stall of blue pitchers on the Via Dolorosa,he's sweeping. The rubbed stonesfeel holy. Dusting of powdered sugaracross faces of date-stuffed mamool.

This morning we lit the slim white candleswhich bend over at the waist by noon.For once the priests weren't fightingin the church for the best spots to stand.As a boy, my father listened to them fight.This is partly why he prays in no languagebut his own. Why I press my lipsto every exception.

A woman opens a window—here and here and here—placing a vase of blue flowerson an orange cloth. I follow her.She is making a soup from what she had leftin the bowl, the shriveled garlic and bent bean.She is leaving nothing out.

• Born - March 12, 1952 • Half Palestinian and half American • St. Louis, Jerusalem, San Diego• B.A. English and world religions• “Wandering poet” – Storyteller• Songs and novels along with poems• Married 1978

Style

• Imagery (visual, kinesthetic, organic, auditory…)

• Words flow like a storyteller

• Metaphors

• Repetition

• Culture-clash• Religion• Death• Fear• Unity

Theme

Making a FistFor the first time, on the road north of Tampico,I felt the life sliding out of me,a drum in the desert, harder and harder to hear. I was seven, I lay in the carwatching palm trees swirl a sickening pattern past the glass.My stomach was a melon split wide inside my skin.

“How do you know if you are going to die?”I begged my mother.We had been traveling for days.With strange confidence she answered,“When you can no longer make a fist.”

Years later I smile to think of that journey,the borders we must cross separately,stamped with our unanswerable woes.I who did not die, who am still living,still lying in the backseat behind all my questions,clenching and opening one small hand.

Review by Brad Bostian…“These talents are

wonderful, but they’re

the powers of someone

with a superior eye and

tongue.” “As with most collections, Fuel is too long, and sometimes quite ordinary. This tendency to get watered

down by saying too much comes with the age we live in, but doesn’t become a sage.”

She is courteous, even

ladylike, but equally

bold in thought.

“Naomi Shihab

Nye, is an

American, an Arab,

a Poet, a parent, a

woman of Texas, a

woman of ideas.”

Interview with Bill Moyers…

Moyers found comfort

in her poetry while in

the hospital.“Her poems speak of

ordinary things – things we

take for granted until it’s

too late…”

“Hidden”

HiddenIf you place a fernunder a stonethe next day it will benearly invisibleas if the stone has swallowed it.

If you tuck the name of a loved oneunder your tongue too longwithout speaking itit becomes bloodsighthe little sucked-in breath of airhiding everywherebeneath your words.

No one seesthe fuel that feeds you.

We Agree

• Woman of ideas

• Comforting

• Great poet – writes about every day things

We Disagree

• Superiority

• Boring for this day and age

• Doesn’t evoke emotion

“My German-American grandmother gave me a powder puff that when tapped 30 years

later, still emits a small mysterious cloud. My Palestinian grandmother gave me a laugh

and a tilt of the head. My Great uncle Paul gave me a complete sewing kit, 100 years old and 1 inch tall.

Whenever people have asked, ‘Where do you get ideas to write about?’ I wonder, ‘Where

do you not?’”

Influence in Poetry

“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?

Blood

• How does the poet’s gender/life experiences/cultural background influence his or her poetry (3-4 slides)

• http://www.forpoetry.com/Archive/review_naomi_shihab_nye.htm