And the sorrow of injustice was very alive in both of them…. like a shadow or a friend.”. Tippett: After a short break, more with Naomi Shihab Nye. “Before you know what kindness really is First of all, there’s the opening page of Transfer, where you’re dedicating the book to your father, but you — the passage that starts, “Refugee, not always.”, “Refugee Born in Jordan, had never seen Jordan, was taken to Kuwait as a baby and raised in Kuwait, and now she was a college senior. It’s an act that helps you, preserves you, energizes you in the very doing of it. Tippett: And so I’ve started carrying a notebook again, after 20 years. New subject matter for spoken word poetry. And it seemed more exciting or illuminating to share them and see what happened next than to just keep them for myself. a history revealed.”. Tippett: Yes, I’d love for you to read it. Shihab Nye: Well, I lived in Ferguson till I was 14. Everything depended on mutual respect. I wrote it down, but I honestly felt as if it were a female voice speaking in the air across a plaza in Popayán, Colombia. And I was a religion major in college, simply because of my…. not always My mother would say, especially if I’d been in some kind of mischief at school, which occasionally happened, because I wasn’t always focused on Jack and — who were those people? And I think that’s — it’s so strangely appealing, these days, to large numbers of people — I don’t know who they are, I don’t understand where they’re coming from — not to respect someone else’s culture, if it doesn’t look just like yours. Love is not love”. deep in the pocket that is skin’s secret own. Shihab Nye: Right. on the northern border once a confident schoolboy Where do we go? to plead with the air: Shihab Nye: “Cross That Line” is an important poem to me because I loved Paul Robeson so much as a child. Why weren’t they looking to begin with?”. How can we improve this soil?” — that’s the way that he lived his whole life. Maya Angelou Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri, on April 4, 1928. And so feeling that sense of gravity and belonging everywhere is very important to me. Tippett: So your Palestinian refugee father — you say — and this comes through over and over again — but as you wrote about him after he died, you say: “He loved the world. You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I'll rise. This is good.” It’s true, too. it was never seen, never known as I have common things in my life. of a bird, swirling onto a step, But he has a line where he says, “I learned from my neighbors everything they would tell me.” And I think that sort of appetite for knowing, that curiosity — “What grows here? Shihab Nye: I was six, when I started writing my own poems, and seven when I started sending them out. Specific ideas to write slam poems about. Writing poetry is a bridge that allows people to express their feelings and make others live every single word they read. And just today, some students I was talking to in a Skype class in Kuwait — how much I love the modern world, that we can do these things. And a girl, in fact, wrote me a note in Yokohama, on the day that I was leaving her school, that has come to be the most significant note any student has written me in years. And then we have the amazing fields and fields and miles and miles of wildflowers in Texas and just that sense of return, restoration, energy coming back out of the soil. And what do you do now? You can read as many as you want, and also submit your own poems to share your writings with all our poets, members, and visitors. If you write three lines down in a notebook every day” — and then, in parentheses, “they don’t have to be great or important, they don’t have to relate to one another, you don’t have to show them to anyone” — “you will find out what you notice. Shihab Nye: Right. You feel as if you recognize it, you see it, maybe it sees you back, and you’re participating in a world where it exists. To Murder Muzahidul Reza. She said, “Well, here in Japan, we have a concept called ‘yutori,’ and it is spaciousness. And that poem is so important to so many people. Who do we talk to? But I felt, at that moment, maybe it was important to gather them together. brave friend. Tippett: And actually, I interviewed Mary Oliver last year, and she said — and by the way, she also described the poem “Wild Geese,” not as a voice coming to her, but basically as something that was just given. Nobody had ever heard of it, either. And there’s kind of an intoxicating feeling of — spring opens up. That’s what I started learning when I was 12, and I never stopped learning it.”. Poet John Agard describes the process of writing his poem 'Checking Out me History'. It’s very important.”, And he talked about being a child and being awakened every day by his granddad, who read to the kids in the house as a wake-up call every morning — stood in the resonant hallway outside their bedrooms and read poems. There should be so much more, not of orange, of words, of how terrible orange is and life. And also, he needed a little push that he didn’t have to read the whole poem, like if he wanted to read just a stanza from Ralph Waldo Emerson or just — “here’s a stanza from Walt Whitman” — that that was OK. You didn’t have to read the entire poem, if you didn’t have time. And he’s lived in many places in his life — he lived in France, England, Mexico; Pennsylvania, as a child. And the last voice that you hear singing at the end of our show is Cameron Kinghorn. We didn’t have passports. Remind us again, What gave you the confidence?” He said, “I’ve been trying to run a publication, here at our university campus, and I can’t get my friends to give me their writing. will stare out the window forever. how desolate the landscape can be That’s not to be underestimated, that it’s important to do that. How you ride and ride Pablo Neruda (143 poem) 12 July 1904 – 23 September 1973 . But skin felt and then goes with you everywhere Pretty amazing. And my husband was going to hitchhike off to Cali, a larger city, to see about getting traveler’s checks reinstated — remember those archaic things? I was looking at A Maze Me, this book that you did, poems for girls, which actually echoes what you just said. neither of his two languages can reach it. I think it’s a miracle that anything works. But it seems that, in your sensibility, you see it as very organic. It is I you have been looking for, What’s happened to the awareness that we don’t have to be vindictive and continue on in a cycle of revenge and violence? And one thing interesting was, he seemed to have needed a little push, since he didn’t see himself as a poet, that it would be OK for him to read a poem. On this dry prepared path walk heavy feet. Pretty women wonder where my secret lies. where a vast audience Tippett: I’m Krista Tippett, and this is On Being. If I had to go to China today and start living in China and doing everything in Chinese, it would be very, very hard. If you know words, if you compose, you might want to share them, because they’ll have a bigger life if you do that.” So I certainly wasn’t thinking about a career; I just thought of myself as having a practice, you know? Tippett: I’m Krista Tippett, and this is On Being. And I think that’s what poetry does for our places, wherever we are. Shihab Nye: Yes, and I was born in greater St. Louis, my mother’s home place. Kareena Kapoor Khan channels her inner poet as she relishes chocolate cake & leaves fans amazed with her poem Kareena Kapoor Khan’s recent post on Instagram gives a … And the Ford Foundation, working to strengthen democratic values, reduce poverty and injustice, promote international cooperation, and advance human achievement worldwide. Tippett: Oh, it’s lovely. catches the thread of all sorrows who journeyed through the night with plans “Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness, How to Write a Poem. I’m not living in Star Trek. I always start my interviews by inquiring about the religious or spiritual background of someone’s childhood. So you think about the bravery of these people and the desperation with which they’re trying to find a realm of safety for their families and — just the basic safeties that we take for granted, every day we get up. What should we do first? 'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells Pumping in my living room. Shihab Nye: And so this was also a little worrisome to us because suddenly, we were gonna split up; I was going to stay here, and he was gonna go there. The House on Mango Street by Mexican American writer Sandra Cisneros has been taught in high schools across the U.S. for decades. Well, I actually think they’re more than we are, because they’re braver. all small forgotten miracles, Be Patient If You Want Love To Grow me poet yeps poet. “What do you mean, we’re living in a poem?” Or, “When? He just wanted to hear everyone read their work. you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho And then this farmer showed up in Oklahoma at a workshop and told us all that he had come just to listen. Written and read by Tippett: [laughs] Those boring — Dick and Jane. Tippett: So there’s 19 Varieties of Gazelle. And we would occasionally talk about the poems; later in the day, he’d bring something up about one of the poems I’d read. So, yes, I am horrified by the ease with which people may belittle one another these days, as if that were a reasonable thing to do. We didn’t have money. The On Being Project is located on Dakota land. It’s invisible. That’s what you do, I think; you claim it. what you counted and carefully saved, Maya Angelou's poem, Caged Bird is a poem that represents many ideas, themes, and thoughts. Tippett: Well, claiming it, right? Her  books include Cast Away, The Tiny Journalist, and A Maze Me: Poems for Girls. Was this published after…? And I wrote it down. Somewhere, you talk about being a 7-year-old poet making “petite discoveries.” I love that phrase.