Tender Spot: Selected Poems

by Naomi Shihab Nye

Naomi Shihab Nye is a wandering poet. For nearly 40 years she has travelled America and the world to read and teach. Born in Missouri to a Palestinian father and an American mother, she grew up in St Louis, Jerusalem and San Antonio. Drawing on her Palestinian-American background, the cultural diversity of Texas, and her experiences in Asia, Europe, Canada, Mexico, Central and South America and the Middle East, her poetry 'reflects this textured heritage, which endowed her with an openness to the experiences of others and a sense of continuity across borders' (Bill Moyers). Through her empathetic use of poetic language, she reveals the shining nature of our daily lives, whether writing about local life in her inner-city Texan neighbourhood or the daily rituals of Jews and Palestinians in the war-torn Middle East. Probing the fragile connection between language and meaning, she shows how lives are marked by tragedy, inequity and misunderstanding, and that our best chance of surviving losses and shortcomings is to be acutely aware of the sacred in all things. First published by Bloodaxe in 2008, Tender Spot has been expanded to include later work, including a selection from Naomi Shihab Nye s 2011 collection Transfer as well as newer poems. She will be reading at Cúirt International Festival of Literature in Galway, Ireland, in April 2015, and at the Poetry Trust's Poetry Proms at the Snape Maltings in August 2015.

Genres: Poetry

192 pages, Paperback

First published April 23, 2015

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

[Amey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shoulders

A man crosses the street in rain,
stepping gently, looking two times north and south,
because his son is asleep on his shoulder.

No car must splash him.
No car drive too near to his shadow.

This man carries the world’s most sensitive cargo
but he’s not marked.
Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,
HANDLE WITH CARE.

His ear fills up with breathing.
He hears the hum of a boy’s dream
deep inside him.

We’re not going to be able
to live in this world
if we’re not willing to do what he’s doing
with one another.

The road will only be wide.
The rain will never stop falling.

HOW FAR IS IT TO THE LAND WE LEFT?

On the first day of his life
the baby opens his eyes
and gets tired doing even that.
He cries when they place a cap on his head.
Too much! Too much!

Later, the whole world will touch him
and he won't even flinch.

[Jonathan Gracey · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the second book of poems I've read. Similar to the first time, there are some poems that resonate so I marked them to read again later. And there are other poems that go in one ear and out the other. I try not to let that slow me down. It's okay to not understand. Life is big. Move on. In this book, I marked 30 poems.

[l · Rating 3 out of 5]

Favourites: Daily, Making a Fist, Rain, Valentine for Ernest Mann, Always Bring a Pencil, Hidden, My Father and the Figtree, Red Brocade, Blood, Cross That Line, Fresh, The Words Under the Words, Letters My Prez is Not Sending, Gate A-4.

[Hattie Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been reading and re-reading these poems since I first bought the book some eleven years ago now. It's worth buying for the poem 'Kindness' alone. 'Before you know what kindness really is / you must lose things...' I've read this poem almost every day for the last five years and it has helped sustain me through the worst times of my life. The different poems in the book will resonate differently with different readers, but each in its own way has something worthwhile to offer, and often something beautiful.

[Luke Morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now, more than ever, we need Naomi Shihab Nye.

[Dan Gobble · Rating 5 out of 5]

A favorite, timely considering events in Gaza:

A Light that Shines on Us Now

This strange beam of being right,
smug spotlight.
What else could we have done?
asks a little one.
What else?

Three girls with book bags
fleeing tanks.

Now that we are so bold,
now that we pretend
God likes some kinds of killing,
how will we deserve
the light of candles,
soft beam of a small lamp
falling across any safe bed?

Orphan boy in a striped shirt
trapped between two glum uncles.
He carries his mother's
smooth fragrance
and father's solid voice.
They were not countries,
they were continents.

Naomi Shihab Nye
(Tender Spot: Selected Poems, 2nd Edition, Northumberland: Bloodaxe Books, Ltd, 2015 (1st Edition: 2008), p. 144)

[A.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you want to acquaint yourself with Naomi Shihab Nye's body of work, get this. It contains a sizeable selection of her poems from 1980-2015. I was initially drawn to work three years ago when I first read this poem of hers (also featured in this book):

So Much Happiness

It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.
With sadness there is something to rub against,
a wound to tend with lotion and cloth.
When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,
something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change.

But happiness floats.
It doesn’t need you to hold it down.
It doesn’t need anything.
Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,
and disappears when it wants to.
You are happy either way.
Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house
and now live over a quarry of noise and dust
cannot make you unhappy.
Everything has a life of its own,
it too could wake up filled with possibilities
of coffee cake and ripe peaches,
and love even the floor which needs to be swept,
the soiled linens and scratched records . . .

Since there is no place large enough
to contain so much happiness,
you shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you
into everything you touch. You are not responsible.
You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit
for the moon, but continues to hold it, and share it,
and in that way, be known.

-
If I could only recommend one poem to hook someone into reading Nye's works, this is it. It continues to be one my most favorite pieces of literature many years and many poems later, and it still carries the same magic as when I first encountered it.

I won't attempt to offer a description on what it is that I love about the poet. Honestly, I don't have the words for it right now (but hopefully someday as two of her poems in this book gave me an idea and encouraged me to write a letter to her). Instead, I'll give you this description from the back cover of the book, which is only partially shown in the goodreads about section:

"Through her empathetic use of poetic language, she reveals the shining nature of our daily lives, whether writing about local life in her inner-city Texan neighbourhood or the daily rituals of Jews and Palestinians in the war-torn Middle East. Probing the fragile connection between language and meaning, she knows how lives are marked by tragedy, inequity and sunderstanding, and that our best chance of surviving losses and shortcomings is to be acutely aware of the sacred in all things."

So yes, go read the book whoever you are. I guarantee that there is at least one poem in there that already has your heart. The only thing left is the joy of finding it.