{"id":1301,"date":"2008-05-30T00:01:09","date_gmt":"2008-05-30T06:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=1301"},"modified":"2013-06-26T11:53:56","modified_gmt":"2013-06-26T17:53:56","slug":"poetry-friday-the-small-room-between-sentences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=1301","title":{"rendered":"Poetry Friday: The Small Room Between Sentences"},"content":{"rendered":"

I finally got my library copy of Naomi Shihab Nye’s<\/strong><\/a> newest book, Honeybee: Poems & Short Prose<\/strong><\/a><\/em> (Greenwillow; February 2008), and it was really worth the wait. (Eisha’s Poetry Friday post on Nye<\/strong><\/a> two weeks ago held me in good stead, though.) I’m still reading, but I wanted to share some poems and prose from it, and when I asked Naomi if I could do so—share some poems in their entirety—she gave me the go-ahead. Yes, this moment of beauty is brought to you by Naomi Shihab Nye, and I extend warm thanks to her. <\/p>\n

Honeybee<\/em>, thus far, has been a rewarding read, and I suspect that reading it again later is only going to unveil even more layers, more threads, more insights. In the introduction, she explains her fascination with bees in college and discusses the “bee woes” of today — “many reports said {in 2007} at least one third of the honeybees in the United States had mysteriously vanished.” She collected theories, she tells us, and became “obsessed…This is what happens in life. Something takes over your mind for a while and you see other things through a new filter, in a changed light. I call my friends ‘honeybee’ now, which I don’t recall doing before. If I see a lone bee hovering in a flower, I wish it well.” <\/p>\n

Nye uses these bees—their communication, their work, their lives—to thread together themes of war; how we are “trained to work for success” (though “failures, mistakes, or disasters,” she adds, “may lead us in intriguing new directions . . . How many writers or artists have said they stumbled into their favorite works when something else they were trying to create didn’t succeed?”); environmentalism; the political atmosphere we live in today; family and parenthood; memories; creative ventures and writing (there’s a poem entitled “How Do I Know When a Poem Is Finished?”); friendship; and much more. She writes of connections between people — and missed connections, the moments when “everyone disappears to one another.” I am in love with this stanza from “Invisible”:<\/p>\n

Sometimes, walking in the city,
\nI felt suddenly thirsty,
\neach storefront sparkling,
\nwomen at stoplights,
\nthe glossy shine of their lips.
\nI wanted to enter restaurants with them
\nwhere the clink of words made business sound real.
\nEach time they swallowed, a waiter tensed,
\nmoved towards them with the pitcher.
\nI wanted the small room between sentences,
\nthe dark and wonderful room.
\nWhen they rose, waiter with towel
\nfolded on arm standing expectantly by.
\nI wanted to feel that moment when
\neveryone disappears to one another,
\nshe steps out swinging her pocketbook,
\nhis hands return to his trousers
\nand the new tablecloth appears,
\nshaken free of its folds.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

She writes of our hurried lives: “why are we rushing around so much? The common phrase ‘I can’t’ wait’ has always troubled me. Does it mean you want your life to pass more swiftly? This or that future moment will surely be better than the current moment, right?” In her short prose piece, “We Are the People,” she writes:<\/p>\n

We Are the People always going somewhere else. What is this peculiar attribute of our households, our days, our nations? We will not be here long enough to get tired of it. Does this make us less responsible? It’s that relationship you have with a towel<\/em> when the towel belongs to a hotel<\/em>.<\/p>\n

. . . I know people who, the minute they get into their homes, tell you where they are going next.<\/p>\n

I am one of them. <\/p>\n

This is nothing to be proud of.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Nye decides to conduct a do-nothing experiment, and the results are both striking and moving, yet she manages to throw some humor in there, too. Later, she writes:<\/p>\n

Watch us humans as we enter our rooms, remove our shoes and watches, and stretch out on the bed with a single good book. It’s the honey of the mind time. Light shines through our little jars.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Speaking of humor, there’s a heapin’ dose of it in a lot of the writing (there’s one fabulous prose entry about how she and a friend in high school walked through a stranger’s home, ooh<\/em>‘ing and aah<\/em>‘ing over all their art, thinking they had entered a local museum housed in an old mansion), all written from the point-of-view of Naomi-the-adult, making this a great read for adults. But older teens—particularly poetry-lovers, needless to say—will enjoy this as well. And these short prose entries? What a wonderful gateway to the book for those teens who think they don’t like poetry. Give ’em this, show them the prose pieces—incisive, funny, and thought-provoking, at turns—and let them stumble upon the compelling poetry. They’ll be converted to poetry in no time, my friends. <\/p>\n

A clunkier writer could easily mangle the weaving-together of these bee themes, but Nye handles it expertly. As she always does. Again, I’m still reading, still savoring, but—since I have permission to share a poem or two in its entirety—I’ll share a couple here. It’s really hard to pick and I just know<\/em> there’s another exquisite poem around the corner, to-be-read, that I haven’t shaken hands with yet, but obviously this theme of our hurried lives and the swift passing of time is striking a chord with me now, so I’ll choose the following two. <\/p>\n

Happy Poetry Friday to one and all. The Poetry Friday round-up today is at Wild Rose Reader<\/strong><\/em><\/a> with the honorable Ms. Magliaro. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

“The Problem of Muchness” and “To One Now Grown” from HONEYBEE: POEMS & SHORT PROSE. Copyright \u00a9 2008 Naomi Shihab Nye. Published by Greenwillow Books. Reproduced by permission of the author. All rights reserved.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I finally got my library copy of Naomi Shihab Nye’s newest book, Honeybee: Poems & Short Prose (Greenwillow; February 2008), and it was really worth the wait. (Eisha’s Poetry Friday post on Nye two weeks ago held me in good stead, though.) I’m still reading, but I wanted to share some poems and prose from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,11,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nonfiction","category-poetry-friday","category-young-adult"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1301\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}