More of this Feature • An Open Letter To Any Would-Be Terrorists from Naomi Shihab Nye

Elsewhere on the Web • Naomi Shihab Nye at the Academy of American Poets site • 1999 Naomi Shihab Nye reading in A Prairie Home Companion archives • “Darling” at Atlantic Online • “Last August Hours Before the Year 2000,” “Two Countries” & “Some Days” in Aubrey Organics • “Keep Driving,” “My Friend's Divorce” & “Why the Silence Still Hangs Over Eastern Oregon” in Clackamas Literary Review • “Alphabet” with notes & audio reading at Borderlands Texas Poetry Review's Web Audio Project • “Famous at A Quiet, Thoughtful Place” • “Minnows” at a Bryn Mawr College site on motherhood & femininity • “Quiet of the Mind” in Kate Rickman's Poetry Reader • Two poems from Fuel in Robert Hass' “Poet's Choice” series • “The Wreath That Eats Two Ice Cubes” in can we have our ball back? • “Shoulders” & “What Is Supposed To Happen” at Esmail Bonakdarian's University of Iowa page • Rain at Stuart Lishan's Ohio State University site • “Sewing, Knitting, Crocheting...” in Caffeine Destiny • “Lights in the Windows” essay in The Alan Review • Profile of Nye by Phil West in the Austin Chronicle • One on One interview by Rachel Barenblat in Pif Magazine

Naomi Shihab Nye is a gem in the crown of the country. You can't help but be engrossed as she reads -- she's always right, always knows what time it is, always shrugs off evil, always bridges the abyss with words. How does such a bouyant figure stay pure during the Horrific Triumph of Capitalism & the shuddering crimes of 11 September?

1. Be an Arab from St. Louis living in San Antonio.
   
   

2. Compare prices  to buy the book • This Same Sky

   Use these perspectives to ease a world of words (check out This Same Sky, the best intro world poetry anthology ever, ed. Naomi Shihab Nye, Simon & Schuster Children's, 1992).
   
   
3. See History and Future all as the same Now's now, e.g., the extraordinary moment of history as Paul Robeson vaulted his songs over the border he was not allowed to cross, in Nye's poem below, “Cross That Line.”

Poems need no passports. There must be a Universal Artist Passport, with no borders. Naomi Shihab Nye is the First Citizen of the World of Poetry!

Bob Holman

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CROSS THAT LINE

Paul Robeson stood
on the northern border of the USA
and sang into Canada
where a vast audience
sat on folding chairs
waiting to hear him.

He sang into Canada.
His voice left the USA
when his body was not allowed
to cross that line.

Remind us again, brave friend!
What countries may we sing into?
What lines should we all be crossing?
What songs travel toward us
from far away
to deepen our days?

©2001, Naomi Shihab Nye

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Naomi Shihab Nye loves the heat of the Texas summers and believes the Palestinians and Jews will someday, may it not take too long, may all the rest of the precious children please be spared, work it out.... Next week, Part 2, Naomi writes an open letter to the Arab community....

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