You and Yours

by Naomi Shihab Nye Narrated by Naomi Shihab Nye

Overview

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.

This audiobook is narrated by the author.

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.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Redemptive moments and struggling households from south Texas to the Middle East dominate the ample, likable latest collection from the prolific Nye (The Space Between Our Footsteps; Fuel, etc.), whose Palestinian-American heritage forms part of the staging of these poems: "What countries may we/ sing into?/ What lines should we all/ be crossing?" her opening poem asks, and the two halves of her volume provide calm answers. Part one covers Nye's personal experience, at home with her child in San Antonio or as a "Frequent Frequent Flyer" enjoying the sights of Scotland. Witty prose poems alternate with clean-lined, moving verse reminiscent at times of Stanley Kunitz. Part two covers the Middle East with indignity and compassion, considering the blameless citizens for whom "to be able to say/ this is a day and I live in it safely,/ for those I love, was all." Nye has produced several volumes of poetry (and a novel) for children and teens: the careful simplicities (and the attempted optimism) here sometimes keep younger readers in mind. Yet she retains a grownup's sense of our common failings, as when she compares Palestinians in particular, and human beings in general, to flying cranes: "If the ground satisfied their dreams," she muses, "the sky would miss them." (Sept.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940178849323
Publisher:	BOA Editions, Ltd.
Publication date:	12/20/2013
Series:	American Poets Continuum
Edition description:	Unabridged

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