"What will be forgotten/ falls over me/ like the sky/ over our whole neighborhood," writes Nye in her sixth full-length collection, lamenting the memories that will disappear with departing Texas neighbors. Nye, who is also a noted YA novelist and anthologist of poems for children (The Space Between Our Footsteps: Poems and Paintings from the Middle East, Forecasts, Mar. 2), spent part of her adolescence with family in Palestinian Jerusalem, and in another poem likens memories to the "broken bits,/ chips" swept away by the glass seller on the Via Dolorosa. But even as her speaker evokes a world that's fading from recollection and struggles to abide a life where "our tea has trouble being sweet," she finds wry consolation in "Pancakes with Santa" ("What else can we say to Santa?/ Santa says ain't"), and can take pleasure in watching a man letter a sign in Arabic and English. Such small-scale multi-ethnic negotiations run through the collectionAfrom the Japanese city of Yokohama to Hebron and back to the poet's San Antonio homeAand offer microcosmic takes on larger conflicts: "No one hears the soldiers come at night/ to pluck the olive tree from its cool sleep./ Ripping up its roots. This is not a headline/ in your country or mine." Nye's witnessings of everday life and strife never quite acquire collective force, yet they convey a delicate sense of moral concern and a necessary sense of urgency.
"What will be forgotten/ falls over me/ like the sky/ over our whole neighborhood," writes Nye in her sixth full-length collection, lamenting the memories that will disappear with departing Texas neighbors. Nye, who is also a noted YA novelist and anthologist of poems for children (The Space Between Our Footsteps: Poems and Paintings from the Middle East, Forecasts, Mar. 2), spent part of her adolescence with family in Palestinian Jerusalem, and in another poem likens memories to the "broken bits,/ chips" swept away by the glass seller on the Via Dolorosa. But even as her speaker evokes a world that's fading from recollection and struggles to abide a life where "our tea has trouble being sweet," she finds wry consolation in "Pancakes with Santa" ("What else can we say to Santa?/ Santa says ain't"), and can take pleasure in watching a man letter a sign in Arabic and English. Such small-scale multi-ethnic negotiations run through the collectionfrom the Japanese city of Yokohama to Hebron and back to the poet's San Antonio homeand offer microcosmic takes on larger conflicts: "No one hears the soldiers come at night/ to pluck the olive tree from its cool sleep./ Ripping up its roots. This is not a headline/ in your country or mine." Nye's witnessings of everday life and strife never quite acquire collective force, yet they convey a delicate sense of moral concern and a necessary sense of urgency. (June)
Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
The author of a YA novel (Habibi) and editor of a few anthologies of poems for children, Nye (The Red Suitcase) not surprisingly values the innocence of the young; her poems exult in simple things and possibilities, for þNOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE,þshe shouts. But her hope sometimes borders on naive, especially when she proclaims, þthe word þtogetherþ wants to live in every house.þ Nyeþs þravenous joyþ often involves her son, who says all kinds of cute stuff, and whose everyday profundities she records seriatim (þOne Boy Told Meþ); and with whom she chats at the ballet; and who also teaches her the mysteries of roller-skating, and, of course, love (þSo Thereþ). Nye also delights in used clothing, the pencil, carnivals, rising early, and her husbandþs New England ancestors. She herself never fails to remind us indifferent Westerners of her fatherþs Palestinian roots, and the sadness she finds in the old country, where theyþve given up parties for war, and ancient olive trees are uprooted. There are some other sorrows in these simple poems, but theyþre mostly remoteþthe victims of war, those suffering from a drought, and a lonely widower. Nyeþs gentle parables find expression in occasional prose: a girl cries on the beach in Honolulu; the poet receives phone calls meant for a rowdy bar; andþalasþall her mail (in þSad Mailþ) seems to be from people wanting things from her, the powerful poet. At her best, Nye trills childlike songs of joy, but her efforts to balance all the enthusiasm strain for seriousness.
