Quiz

1. Who do you think the poem "Streets" is about? Why? Use evidence from the poem to explain your answer.

2. In "Streets," how many lines are there in stanza 4? How many sentences?

3. In stanza 3, there is an example of personification. Say what it is and explain why that is an example of personification.

4. Identify two things being contrasted in the poem "Streets" and discuss why the author might wish to highlight that contrast. What is the message she sends in that contrast?

5.How many stanzas are in the poem "Hidden" and how many sentences are there?

6. In "Hidden," what do you think it means to "tuck the name of a loved one under your tongue for too long"? Explain your answer.

7. Connect the poem "Hidden" to any other poem or poems we have read by Nye. How is "Hidden" similar to those others in theme or message? Explain.

8. In the interview, Nye stated that "the fuel that feeds her" is poetry, words, language. In this poem, though, it seems like the "fuel that feeds you" refers to something different. What do you think it refers to? Use evidence from the poem to explain your answer.

Interview link

http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_nye.html

"Streets" by Naomi Shihab Nye

A man leaves the world
and the streets he lived on
grow a little shorter.

One more window dark
in this city, the figs on his branches
will soften for birds.

If we stand quietly enough evenings
there grows a whole company of us
standing quietly together.
overhead loud grackles are claiming their trees
and the sky which sews and sews, tirelessly sewing,
drops her purple hem.
Each thing in its time, in its place,
it would be nice to think the same about people.

Some people do. They sleep completely,
waking refreshed. Others live in two worlds,
the lost and remembered.
They sleep twice, once for the one who is gone,
once for themselves. They dream thickly,
dream double, they wake from a dream
into another one, they walk the short streets
calling out names, and then they answer. 

"Hidden" by Naomi Shihab Nye

If you place a fern
under a stone
the next day it will be
nearly invisible
as if the stone has
swallowed it.

If you tuck the name of a loved one
under your tongue too long
without speaking it
it becomes blood
sigh
the little sucked-in breath of air
hiding everywhere
beneath your words.

No one sees
the fuel that feeds you.

Quiz

Reading Quiz on “Two Countries” by Naomi Shihab Nye

For this quiz, answer question # 1 and 2 out of 3 questions from #2, #3, & #4

Reread the poem (posted on the course blog) to become familiar with it.

1)      Review these lines:

Skin had hope, that's what skin does.

Heals over the scarred place, makes a road.

What do you think these two lines mean? Offer an interpretation and back it up using

specific evidence in the poem.

2)      What could skin be a metaphor or symbol for?

3)      Why do you think the poet is thankful for "travelers, that people go places larger than

themselves"? How can travel (physical or metaphorical) help heal the divisions between people, countries, or cultures?

4)      Based on what you know about the poet, what is the significance of the line "Love

means you breathe in two countries"?

Our Nye-Inspired Poetry

I will update this post as everyone posts their poems.

Aim for Journeys

Journeys can be different. 

Follow your eyes and walk through the world: 

To see those damp new grapes in the orchard, 

To hear these prayers and let them cool you down, 

And sleep on those stones with rough edges. 

Bread is my breakfast.
Letter is on the table.
Voice start, thought walked in my brain.
I listen to the voice, and sleep on the ground.
Flower's fragrance fly in the air.
My mom send message, and let me go to school.
I'm so tired.
But I should learn.



Arabic prayers said kneeling

Long years make lives

Wisdom listens more

New message saying


I was learning while guests were talking,

I can heard it.

Mom passed me coffee and grape.

I ate and learned half-heartedly,

I said that I wish to sleep because I got fever.

She sat with me and told me folktales.

Longing (inspired poem)

Papa went a journey to white sky
With his damp and sick skin,
With my foolish, indifferent
and half-hearted thought

However he is still everywhere around me
At the street, in my dream, even in my pocket

Papa if you are listening,
Please answer to my dim voice

See,
Sky is blacker.
I wish,
terrorists stop.
Tell me,
When can we see flowers again?

I am in a long journey,

A journey that is too long and too important.

A journey with strong emblems and assurance.

It's mysterious and it's like a miracle.

It never ends

Coffee is never too strong for me,

Let it in 

Day start, Day finish 

Carry you to the balanced road

A voice comes from sky,
Says "Answer me, are you a dreamer?"
I tell him years ago I was
I dreamed about being a seed,
I could become a fruit,
I could become a tree,
A cherry tree,
Or even a fig tree.
But now, I am just a normal people pass among the street.





Papa told me that, Arabics' life is mysterious.

Faith is more important than other things.

He went to Arab as a guest.

"People around the world think their life is strange and sick,

but I think they are just faithful.

Years past.

There was a hard time.

Learning form the life.

Have a cup of coffee.

Once thought that never stop.

Picking up the sunshine, 

and put into my pocket. 

A Seed, a Song, a Sky -- A Nye-Inspired Poem (by Ms. Guarino -- oops, sorry if anyone thought this was a Nye poem!)

My husband tucks our baby into her bed:
     a small, strange flower
     a vivid, mysterious miracle.

I kneel, touch her hand,
     watch, watch,
     later weep,
     rarely sleep.
I paint a wish for her later years into my prayers;
I bake my messages for her into sweet bread,
     weave my dreams for her into long scarves.

Will it be enough
     to carry her through full days,
     send her into new spaces,
     fly her into strange worlds?

Will my song, my gift,
     follow her through earth and sky?

Two More Nye Poems to Add to Our Reading Collection

Ducks

We thought of ourselves as people of culture.
How long will it be till others see us that way again?
Iraqi friend

In her first home each book had a light around it.
The voices of distant countries
floated in through open windows,
entering her soup and her mirror.
They slept with her in the same thick bed.

Someday she would go there.
Her voice, among all those voices.
In Iraq a book never had one owner – it had ten.
Lucky books, to be held often
and gently, by so many hands.

Later in American libraries she felt sad
for books no one ever checked out.

She lived in a country house beside a pond
and kept ducks, two male, one female.
She worried over the difficult relations of triangles.
One of the ducks often seemed depressed.
But not the same one.

During the war between her two countries
she watched the ducks more than usual.
She stayed quiet with the ducks.
Some days they huddled among reeds
or floated together.

She could not call her family in Basra
which had grown farther away than ever
nor could they call her. For nearly a year

she would not know who was alive,
who was dead.

The ducks were building a nest.

The Art of Disappearing.

When they say Don't I know you? say no.

When they invite you to the party

remember what parties are like

before answering.

Someone telling you in a loud voice

they once wrote a poem.

Greasy sausage balls on a paper plate.

Then reply.

If they say we should get together.

say why? It's not that you don't love them any more.

You're trying to remember something

too important to forget.

Trees.

The monastery bell at twilight.

Tell them you have a new project.

It will never be finished. When someone recognizes you in a grocery store

nod briefly and become a cabbage.

When someone you haven't seen in ten years

appears at the door,

don't start singing him all your new songs.

You will never catch up.

Walk around feeling like a leaf. Know you could tumble any second. Then decide what to do with your time.

"To sit with great poetry is to reflect on love and death, to open the window to mystery, to ask childlike questions again" -- Jeanne Murray Walker

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.

Famous

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.



Burning the Old Year




Letters swallow themselves in seconds.   

Notes friends tied to the doorknob,   

transparent scarlet paper,

sizzle like moth wings,

marry the air.

So much of any year is flammable,   

lists of vegetables, partial poems.   

Orange swirling flame of days,   

so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,   

an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.   

I begin again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,   

only the things I didn’t do   

crackle after the blazing dies.

Poetry Unit

We are beginning a unit of reading poetry with the poet Naomi Shihab Nye.

Here is some biographical information about her from the Academy of American Poets:

"Naomi Shihab Nye was born on March 12, 1952, in St. Louis, Missouri, to a Palestinian father and an American mother. During her high school years, she lived in Ramallah in Palestine, the Old City in Jerusalem, and San Antonio, Texas" 

(www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/naomi-shihab-nye)

She writes a lot about family, nature, and humanity. Like most poets, she tries to create a new way of seeing the world, and she explores complex meanings while painting a simple picture with words. Here is a video of Nye reading a poem written from a child's perspective of the world:

And, finally, here is another poem that represent's a child's view of nature and humanity (from www.poetryfoundation.org):

Boy and Egg

BY NAOMI SHIHAB NYE

Every few minutes, he wants

to march the trail of flattened rye grass

back to the house of muttering

hens. He too could make

a bed in hay. Yesterday the egg so fresh

it felt hot in his hand and he pressed it

to his ear while the other children

laughed and ran with a ball, leaving him,

so little yet, too forgetful in games,

ready to cry if the ball brushed him,

riveted to the secret of birds

caught up inside his fist,

not ready to give it over

to the refrigerator

or the rest of the day.

Reprinted from Fuel, published by BOA Editions by permission of the author. Copyright © 1998 by Naomi Shihab Nye, whose most recent book is A Maze Me, Harper Collins/Greenwillow, 2004.

Source: Fuel (BOA Editions Ltd., 1998)