Naomi Shihab Nye: Every day as a wide field, every page
And there were so many more poems to read!
Countless friends to listen to.
We didn’t have to be in the same room—
the great modern magic.
Naomi Shihab Nye: A Palestinian Might Say
What?
You don’t feel at home in your country,
almost overnight?
Naomi Shihab Nye: Alive
Dear Board of Education, no one will ever
remember a test. Repeat. Stories,
poems, projects, experiments,
mischief, yes, but never a test.
Video: The commencement address that Harvard suppressed for mentioning genocide
Who are the people who remind you of your worth and give you the courage to try again? And who are the people who sit with you as we witness the moral injuries of our time?
Naomi Shihab Nye: Trying to Name What Doesn’t Change
Every Tuesday on Morales Street
butchers crack the necks of a hundred hens.
The widow in the tilted house
spices her soup with cinnamon.
Ask her what doesn’t change.
Naomi Shihab Nye: Voice of America
The Voice of America got us to Karachi. Damascus. Islamabad. Dhaka. We went everywhere thanks to the Voice of America. Sat in circles on wooden floors, wore white flower garlands on beaches. Spent birthdays beneath mosquito nets. Rode in rickshaws. Stirred curries. Made friends. Loners. Social butterflies. A monkey climbed through a window in south India to lift the lid of a pot.
Naomi Shihab Nye: The Words Under the Words
My grandmother’s days are made of bread,
a round pat-pat and the slow baking.
She waits by the oven watching a strange car
circle the streets. Maybe it holds her son,
lost to America.
Vox Populi: The Most Popular Posts of 2024
Thank you so much for helping to make Vox Populi a success in 2024. Since our founding 10 years ago as a newsletter for anti-fracking activists in Western Pennsylvania, we’ve accumulated more than 5,000,000 visits. We now have over 20,000 daily subscribers, about 35% outside the United States.
Liza M. Hinchey: How small acts of kindness and connection really can change the world, according to research
Research shows that individual acts of kindness and connection can have a real impact on global change when these acts are collective.
Video: Naomi Shihab Nye reads her poem Gate A-4
I heard an announcement:
“If anyone in the vicinity of Gate A-4 understands any Arabic, please
come to the gate immediately.”
Naomi Shihab Nye: Different Ways to Pray
There were the men who had been shepherds so long
they walked like sheep.
Under the olive trees, they raised their arms—
Hear us! We have pain on earth!
Angele Ellis: “I lived in the dark” | In Grace Notes, Naomi Shihab Nye finds the music in poems about families and the incidents and accidents of personal history
All poetry begins in song, as Naomi Shihab Nye reminds the reader, starting with the title of her latest collection, 117 mostly brief free verse poems that like songs, are both accessible and mysterious.
Naomi Shihab Nye: Before I Was A Gazan
I was a boy
and my homework was missing,
paper with numbers on it,
stacked and lined
Naomi Shihab Nye: Everything in Our World Did Not Seem to Fit
Once they started invading us.
Taking our houses and trees, drawing lines,
pushing us into tiny places.
