Honeybee: Poems and Short Prose

by Naomi Shihab Nye

Honey. Beeswax. Pollinate. Hive. Colony. Work. Dance. Communicate. Industrious. Buzz. Sting. Cooperate.

Where would we be without them? Where would we be without one another?

In eighty-two poems and paragraphs, Naomi Shihab Nye alights on the essentials of our time—our loved ones, our dense air, our wars, our memories, our planet—and leaves us feeling curiously sweeter and profoundly soothed.

Genres: Poetry, Young Adult, Cultural, Adult, Middle Grade, Short Stories, Childrens

164 pages, Hardcover

First published February 26, 2008

About the author

Naomi Shihab Nye was born to a Palestinian father and an American mother. During her high school years, she lived in Ramallah in Jordan, the Old City in Jerusalem, and San Antonio, Texas, where she later received her B.A. in English and world religions from Trinity University. She is a novelist, poet and songwriter.

She currently lives in San Antonio, Texas. She was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2010.

Reviews

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very enjoyable collection, combining the whimsy and joys of observation with deeper themes of war, immigration, and climate change. Nye is quite a prolific writer, and I am glad to have started here.

[Lindsay · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is so weird to feel (almost) nostalgic reading protest poems about the Bush administration.

[Relyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This woman can write! I mean, she can really, really write. Her essay about accidentally entering a home which she thought was a museum, was incredible.

So, why the three stars? Her politics were a little too in-your-face for me. I know that we all have different opinions, different viewpoints. I have no problem with that. What a dull, small world we would live in if that we didn't. I have many friends with extremely different viewpoints from my own. No problem there either. It's just that I got tired of Nye circling back around and beating the same drum again and again. And again. The people whose opinions I most learn from and feel challenged by are those people who show respect for someone with a differing point of view. Nye did not. Not once.

[Brandon · Rating 4 out of 5]

An incredible showing of work from current Young People's Poet Laureate Naomi Shihab Nye. You are going to feel, and feel deeply, she says. "Drinking it in. That's when we really live. Dipping and diving down into the nectar of scenes." (p. 6) There is the beautiful telling in 'Museum' where a young Nye and her friend mistake someone's house for a museum, walk in and around, awkward and all, and their love inspires all the same. Poetry is wielded like a weapon to weaponry as the author writes in protest against Bush and America's Middle East interventions, exemplified in 'Letters My Prez Is Not Sending'. Last Day of School is a love letter, a time-conscious piece that deifies the schools in our lives. And Gate A-4 is an ideal of living in love, and what that may do for us, all of us.

Read, read now for Love.

[Jesse Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ever since Rachel McElroy read aloud Naomi Shihab Nye's poem Famous on her podcast Wonderful!, I have had it etched in my mind, along with a deep longing in my heart to read everything she's ever written. Honeybee was my first and I'm so glad it was. I loved every moment of it, the prose complemented the poetry so well and the themese that tied everything together were brilliant. I love bees so much, my uncle is a beekeeper and I grew up with fresh honey, clover and buzzing around me. The way this work encapsulates all the magic and importance of bees, both practically and in metaphor, is astounding. I would absolutely recommend this collection!

---

How can we help someone else want to live?

---

I have slept so many times you might think I would really be awake by now.

---

The Crickets Welcome Me to Japan-
they’re saying, Slow down slow down We told you this long ago but you forgot

---

I wanted the small room between sentences, the dark and wonderful room.

---

Look at those mansions, don’t you wish one was yours? Actually, I like little houses, less to clean. I wanted to live under the roots of a tree, like the squirrel family in a picture book, when I was small.

---

As if there were a home in the air around us from birth, spaciousness bidding us enter, we live inside the long story of time. And it was language giving us bearing, letting in light.

[madamescarlette · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picture me cruising through, having a grand old time, almost like a chat over tea sandwiches with a friend, until the very final poem (Gate A-4, one of few I already knew, ironically) made me stop and burst into tears.

All of Naomi's work seems to be the answer to the question "are there still beautiful things?" She wholeheartedly shouts YES, of course there are! And you are already outfitted with everything you need to add to them! The kindness of this world has always been within you so you must let it live! And that is so real of her.

[Jennifer Mangler · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the second collection of poetry by Nye that I've read and very much enjoyed. I love how she celebrates the small, beautiful moments that make up the best of us. It seems that some readers object to the politics in some of her poems, but I see it as an important part of her reflection on humanity. And the McNay Museum story? I really needed the chuckle I got from that one.

[Sadie Roman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely LOVED this!

[Dhwani Shah]

I didn't finish it, read 50% of it. I don't think I will ever finish it, it doesn't have enough bees haha. I liked the poems that ask humans to just be still for a while.

[Angela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chills and tears. I wish these poems were not still relevant.

[Grace White]

absolutely wonderful. will reread, reread, and reread...

[Danielle Palmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

A bit disjointed, some of the various ideas in certain poems didn’t seem to fit together. The attempt to link everything to bees felt a bit forced. Other than that, many words of wisdom!

[Nadine in NY Jones · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars

In her moments of brilliance, the poems shine. Some are short and seem to capture the meaning of life in a few lines. Some are longer and surprise you with a gem nestled among the words.

She has a sly wit and a beautiful appreciation for the world around her, but sometimes this is overtaken by the message, (either about the environment or the violence in the Middle East and how the U.S. Is wrongwrongwrong), and these are beset with a smug tone, and my attention involuntarily wandered away from the page, instinctively averting my eyes, not wanting to witness her embarrassing moments of rudeness.

When it works, it really works:

There Was No Wind
I don't know why I would tell
an outright lie
to someone I never saw before
but when she asked
Did you close this door?
in an accusing tone
I said No, the wind closed it

She gave me an odd look
pushed the door wide open
and left it that way

I felt strange the rest of the day
walking around
with a stone on my tongue


The Crickets Welcome Me to Japan
All night they strum
their tuneless tunes

cousins of the crickets I heard
long ago in the corners of my room

I know the stories
to carry them out, not to crush them

and the small cages they are kept in
for good luck

but tonight I understand them
for the first time

after all my flying over water
the long tipped hours, the stretched-out light

they’re saying, Slow down
slow down

We told you this long ago but
but you forgot.


Running Egret
We want our nature to have a face.
An eye we can look into,
not like ours – clearer. Strong body
moving swiftly over land, belonging to no one.

Nonpartisan egret,
beyond everything that burden us,
unexpected, unpredictable,
sheer motion – flash of white –
creatures with a silence
wider than our own.

There are days we wake and need an egret.

ETA: I didn't realize until I started reading the reviews here that this book is being marketed as a book of children's poetry - this is not a children's book. Maybe the publisher got confused by the cute honeybee? The politics will go over children's heads, and the mature conclusions in the "nature" poems will just confuse them. The poems in this book that I found most powerful were wistful poems mourning times gone by, a mom looking back on the time when her children were young, and so on. These aren't things that will resonate with children.

[Liz Strode · Rating 4 out of 5]

AWARDS AND HONORS:
2008 Arab-American Book Award, School Library Journal Best Book, Cooperative Children's Book Center Choice
OVERALL RESPONSE
"Honeybee" made me want to start writing poetry again. I haven't written a poem since last October when I taught poetry as part of a unit about discovering "Who am I?" in my 6th grade language arts class. The introduction was key in bringing the entire book of poems together. Though this is a collection of poems, some previously published elsewhere, by the time I read the last words on the last page, I felt as if I spent a few years inside Naomi's mind. She made me think deeply about the way the world works and the way people relate. She also made me laugh and smile a number of times! Of course, a reader can also see how her love and concern for Honeybees developed through a linguistics course in college. I can imagine Nye sitting on her front porch, drinking lemonade or tea and pondering the lives of creatures great and small...then picking up a pen and spilling her thoughts onto a page.

Bill Teale said we were all reading "Novels in Verse" this week, but I don't think Honeybee is a novel in the way Love That Dog or Locomotion are.

SPECIFICS
Honeybee is a collection of free verse poetry; some of it leaning more towards short vignettes. (i.e. Museum and Gate A-4). Her poems include an abundance of imagery and insight.

Examples of clear imagery through word choice and metaphor:
Password
There Was No Wind
Companions
Broken

Examples of Insight (poems that really made me think, or laugh, or experience an "ah-ha" moment):
Museum
Communication Skills
Taverne du Passage
Missing It
How We Talk About It
Lion Park
Broken
The Cost
The Dirtiest 4-Letter Word
Gate A-4

Though her poetry does not rhyme, she does use sound to create the pace and tone of many of her poems:

Examples of Alliteration:
Broken
A Stone So Big you Could Live in It
We Are Not Nothing

Example of Onomatopoeia:
We Are the People

Examples of Line Breaks:
Communication Skills
Password
Girls, Girls
What Happened to the Air

CURRICULAR CONNECTION
Honeybee is a good resource when trying to move middle school students away from the idea that all poems have to rhyme or be silly/humorous. I would use her poems as mentor texts to help students understand that poetry can be so much more than an ABAB rhyme pattern; that most importantly, poetry is an outlet for expressing how we feel and think about life and the world around us.

[Aimee Iwersen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Studying elementary literacy in school has given me a great opportunity to catch up on what my kids are reading these days. And folks, it is really different. What I have read just these past few months makes me sad that I was reading crap like Christopher Pike when I was in middle school. :)
This is my lastest read-Honeybee, by Naomi Shihab Nye. This is a collection of poetry for kids and adults. She writes outside of the catchy rhymes and funny characters. She writes about her experience growing up as an Arab-American, the Iraq War, Education, Americana culture, family and the environment. She has warmth and insight into the human spirit. I bought it over the weekend and I have read it about five times now. It's a beautiful collection that helps kids connect with the society that they are growing up in. through her poetry she promotes international peace and goodwill through the arts. Excellent. This will be a staple in my classroom for sure...

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

The cover of this book says "Poems," but you'll notice the title here on Goodreads is more accurate: "Poems & Short Prose." The prose breaks up the poems nicely, and Nye's "Museum" prose piece is wonderful enough for you to buy this entire collection. I dug most of the poems. Here are some standouts:

The Crickets Welcome Me to Japan
Girls, Girls
How Do I Know When a Poem is Finished?
Before I Read The Kite Runner
Gate A-4

[Farah Fitria Sari · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't think it would be political, hence the not-5 rating. But overall it has great insights, as always expected from Nye.

[Annie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of these poems hit me hard and made me tear up over the words

Bees being a theme throughout though was pretty cool, I liked listening to those ones.

[Richie Partington · Rating 5 out of 5]

28 January 2008 HONEYBEE by Naomi Shihab Nye, Greenwillow, March 2008, 176p., ISBN: 978-0-06-085590-7; Libr. ISBN: 978-0-06-085591-4

Bees Were Better

"In college people were always breaking up.
We broke up in parking lots,
beside fountains.
Two people broke up
across the table from me
at the library.
I could not sit at that table again
though I did not know them.
I studied bees, who were able
to convey messages through dancing
and could find their ways
home to their hives
even if someone put up a blockade of sheets
and boards and wire.
Bees had radar in their wings and brains
that humans could barely understand.
I wrote a paper proclaiming
their brilliance and superiority
and revised it at a small cafe
featuring wooden hive-shaped honey dippers
in silver honeypots
on every table."

Part of me feels as though I should include a disclaimer when I write about a new book by Naomi, but that is silly -- she is not really my cousin; it just feels that way, having been lucky enough over the years to spend tiny bits of time around her and receive the occasional note that always carries with it a peacefulness like that which I experience upon reading correspondence from Tony, my eldest cousin on my Sicilian side. As I've written previously, Naomi is a fellow Piscian and fellow vegetarian whom I've seen deftly transform a cardboard convention center room into a sacred space with simply a basket of pita, a bowl of hummus, and a book of poetry.

I read and admire a lot of poetry for children and adolescents. I am quite often entertained by it and always share it at booktalks -- including some pieces I first read as a child.

I find something so special in getting to spend an afternoon reading Naomi's work.

HONEYBEE is Naomi's new collection of poetry. Each of the eighty-two poems has a wonderful personal quality; the collection reads as if it is a series of notes in various poetic forms that she has written to the reader.

"...My niece in Australia told me that the students in her university class were required to read the blog of an Iraqi citizen and write about it before they could graduate. She chose a girl who is now fifteen writing under the pseudonym Sunshine. I began reading Sunshine's blog too. I love the way she writes about the details of her life-her friends, the books she is reading, her activities and memories. Life is so difficult since the war started, but still she ends her entries with lines like, 'Try not to lose hope.' She wishes she could live the way kids in other countries live, without so much constant violence surrounding them. Sunshine has become my personal hero, drinking deeply out of the moments. So much is passing so fast..."

This is a bittersweet collection, as Naomi is clearly feeling the pain -- like so many of us -- that continues to be the product of five years of war and war spending. It is also a collection that repeatedly alludes to bees and to the mysterious and well-publicized disappearance of a lot of honeybees in a very short time:

"All the theories about the disappearing bees omit one possibility: they are sick of the word 'busy.' They are on strike. Sure this cycling and collecting and producing is what they've done for so long...worker and queen and drone...blossom and hive and comb... but the last thing the bees want stuck in their pollen baskets is a cliche. Busy? Not I. We can't even know if they adore the fragrances of flowers...but they must, right? Let's hope so. Let's hope there's pleasure in it.

In France, some teenagers asked me, 'Is it true, in your country, students don't take time to sit down and drink tea and eat pie upon return from school?'

Eat pie? This was hard to answer.

'I hope they eat pie,' I said. We all need pie.'
Then I started looking for a restaurant that served pie..."

I, myself, headed for the funky little cafe in Sebastopol where my teenage daughter works after school. I spent the afternoon there, with Rosemary bringing me iced herbal tea and little vegetable sandwiches, and Naomi talking to me through her book, bringing me up to date on her life and observations as one of our most treasured poets.

"And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and thought, this is the world I want to live in."

I highly recommend that you find a nice place to spend an afternoon and experience HONEYBEE.

Richie Partington, MLIS
Richie's Picks http://richiespicks.pbworks.com
https://www.facebook.com/richiespicks/
richiepartington@gmail.com

[Steph Lovelady · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really nice collection of poems and prose poems. I especially liked the prose poems, which are like tiny short stories, really well done, some funny, some touching, some both. There's a bee motif running through it, unsurprisingly. My favorites were "Museum," which can't be described without ruining it and "Gate A-4" about how an unexpected community forms among people waiting for a delayed flight. It ends "This can still happen anywhere. All is not lost," which nearly made me cry. There are a lot of good closing lines. "Last Day of School" ends "I was a fool, and I will always be a fool, and there will never, never, be a last day of school." And this did make me cry, partly because I hope that's true, that we can keep learning forever, but also because this was the last poetry book we read as a family, in a tradition we started when my eldest was in first grade. He just left for college this week. This was an excellent way to finish our twelve-year poetry seminar.

And as a side note, I agree with someone who said in a previous review that the protest poems against the last Bush administration do seem a little quaint nowadays. What we'd all give to be protesting the Bushes these days.

[Laura Cunha · Rating 5 out of 5]

https://leiturasdelaura.blogspot.com/...

SPOILER FREE

Eu descobri a poetisa norte americana descendente de palestinos em 2017, quando li o fofíssimo A Maze Me. Desde então coletei algumas obras dela, conforme foram entrando em promoção, como sempre, e agora peguei mais uma para ler (é tanta coisa que as prioridades deixam de existir ou simplesmente não fazem sentido).

Noami Shihab Nye novamente me surpreendeu quando li You & Yours, a minha primeira coletânea de textos mais orientais dela. Honeybee fica meio que no meio entre as duas.

Não é um senhor soco no estômago como You & Yours, ele tem muito da doçura de A Maze Me, mas sem ser infantil. Confesso que não sei dizer se gostei mais dos poemas ou dos textos/contos/crônicas. Mas preciso dizer que foi interessante descobrir que a autora é ainda mais flexível do que eu imaginava.

Para variar, o livro é lotado de material fácil de virar citações, como:

As for the “busy bee” thing, the word “busy” fell out of my vocabulary more than ten years ago. I haven’t missed it at all. “Busy” is not a word that helps us. It just makes us feel worse as we are doing all we have to do.

Ou:

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? The moment we are living in may be lovely, but if we “can’t wait” for some other time, do we miss it?

Espero poder continuar aumentando minha coleção de livros dela. Vale muito a pena.

[Justin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve only read a few collections of poetry and this is one of the few I really liked. I rarely read poetry and when I do it’s usually individual poems and something I’m teaching. However, just like I tell my students, it’s always good to get out of your comfort zone. So in previewing collections to read I came across this one from Naomi Shihab Nye.

I read and taught her “Habibi” novel a few years back and enjoyed it a lot. Her writing voice really draws you and and sets up the world in a way that makes you immediately feel like you’re in the text. These same qualities drew me into the poems. The collection is centered around honeybees and although only a few were about or referenced honeybees, the general theme of togetherness, i.e. a hive, ties the collection together.

There were a few poems that seemed dated due to references to Bush and Cheney along with the invasion of Iraq. On one hand, this is a great example of art imitating life, but on the other unless you know the context these references can distract from the message. Overall it’s a solid collection.

If you’re new to poetry or a long time fan I think you would enjoy this collection.

[Hanna rass · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a collection of poems that Naomi Shihab Nye has written. I the beginning she tells a story about how when she was in college she took this class where they studied all types of animals. She picked bees, so for a whole semester she studied bees and at the end she gad to write a essay on what she had learn about them. Throughout the book she tells many stories and poems, at first you might not realize it but they all tie back to the story in the beginning. I love how creative she was, she would tell a story and a couple of poems that connected to the story you just heard or the one you are going to hear. All of her poems and stories are either real life events that happen or she got the idea from a real event. Her poems are short but they get to the point. I think this is a great read and everyone should read it, but I have to pick a specific group. This book came into my life at a perfect time, so I think high school freshmen should read this book towards the end of the year.

[Bobby · Rating 5 out of 5]

My ability to speak objectively and/or insightfully about poetry is terribly lacking, but I do want to say this about Honeybee by Naomi Shihab Nye: I learned after I acquired my copy, but before I started reading it, that it is a "kids book." I read it anyway, knowing that often times books aimed at a younger audience can contain great, beautiful truths made slightly more accessible than a book meant for adults. That turned out to be the case with Honeybee. That said, this book never seems to be "talking down" to its intended audience. Instead, it is full of the respect for people - and other living creatures including the honeybee - and could be appreciated by anyone of any age. The mixture of poetry and short prose works well and it is a book that, as I finished it, made me think, "I look forward to reading this one again, and the sooner the better!"

[Isabella · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book took me forever for being mainly a book of short poetry.
The premise is honeybees, which is something I have interest in and have read books about before but about halfway through, I was done with it. It felt like all the poems were forcefully pulled back to be about honeybees when they could’ve stood in their own and been much better.
As I reached the last quarter of the book the authors work became more political and stopped mentioning bees every piece. I liked this point a lot more and the last few poems struck me as more meaningful.
As a whole the book was well written and often funny. My favorite poems or prose were ‘Museum,’ ‘How We Talk About It,’ ‘For a Hermit,’ and ‘Gate A-4.’

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a mixed bag; a mixed hive? Some pieces were great and some didn't land for me. Also, it was sad reading about how desolate she was about the wars of 2008 because things aren't really any better.

I really liked the prose piece about wandering into someone's house and thinking it was a museum until the people who lived there gently asked what they were doing (she and her friend were looking at all the paintings on the walls). Years later, a teenager who was one of the residents mentioned that she started really noticing all the wonderful things in her house after that, so Nye felt at least someone got some good out of her most embarrassing moment.

My favorite poems include "Don't Say", "There Was No Wind" and "Pacify".

[Loren Prato · Rating 4 out of 5]

Honeybee is a book composed of poetry and prose that mix memories, science and social issues. The focus shifts continually from honeybees, to the continuing violence in the Middle East, to memories of childhood, to specific situations in which people manage to transcend their own differences.

I had never read a book of poetry and prose before, and I absolutely loved it. I will definitely use this someday in my class to introduce poetry, prose, and figures of speech. It is not too hard of a read, yet it still gives the reader plenty of opportunities to decode and interpret the writing. Both middle schoolers and high schoolers could benefit from reading this book.

[Amy Layton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nye, using honeybees and their language as inspiration, writes many beautiful poems about the delights and sorrows of everyday life. Experimenting with both verse poetry and paragraph poetry, she succeeds in demonstrating just what’s so special about living, and what’s so special about her culture and her hometown and her family. Her poetry is certainly more serious in nature, and would be best for the introspective youth, perhaps interested in writing their own poetry. This anthology is perfect for sitting and reflecting. Great for grades 5 and up.

Review cross-listed here!

[Cara · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writing is fantastic. I enjoyed so many of the poems and I didn't expect some of them to be so funny.

There is a significant airing of grievances with the politics at the time. I appreciate the snapshot into what the author thinks or thought of the situations she writes about. What took away from it for me was the one sided, divisive bitterness. It was written in such a way the reader is left with only two options, the option to sympathize or to be offended by the author's views and it feels...stunted. Nye's ability is so far above that.

[Sally Kilpatrick]

I tell myself I don't like poetry, but I do. Nye has reminded me of this. Why did I check this book out of the library? I think because I was looking for books by Palestinians, and Nye's father is Palestinian. The poetry in this book is that of an American, an American I'd love to have a cup of coffee with because, among other reasons, she once entered someone's house thinking it was a museum. I can relate hardcore to that.

In general, these poems and the short prose are just delightful and insightful, poignant and inspiring. I'm quite happy to have discovered them.