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Later our dreams begin catching fire around the edges, they burn like paper, we wake with our hands full of ash.

Naomi Shihab Nye

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Naomi Shihab Nye
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: March 12
Poet
Teacher
University Teacher
Writer
St. Louis
Missouri
Hands
Edges
Dream
Wake
Around
Later
Like
Begin
Paper
Dreams
Catching
Full
Ashes
Fire
Burn

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We dropped our troubles into the lap of the storyteller, and they turned into someone else's.
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I do think that all of us think in poems.
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I'm not interested in who suffered the most. I'm interested in people getting over it.
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I think the job of writing and literature is to encourage each one of us to believe that we're living in a story.
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Being good felt like a heavy coat, so I took it off.
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The person you have known a long tme is embedded in you like a jewel. The person you have just met casts out a few glistening beams & you are fascinated to see more of them. How many more are there? With someone you've barely met the curiosity is intoxicating.
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I keep thinking, we teach children to use language to solve their disputes. We teach them not to hit and fight and bite. Then look what adults do!
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It is really hard to be lonely very long in a world of words. Even if you don't have friends somewhere, you still have language, and it will find you and wrap its little syllables around you and suddenly there will be a story to live in.
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A poem is a cup of words open to the sky and wind in a bucket.
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Today you will say things you can predict and other things you could never imagine this minute. Don't reject them, let them come through when they're ready, don't think you can plan it al out. This day will never, no matter how long you live, happen again. It is exquisitely singular. It will never again be exactly repeated.
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Teaching and writing are separate, but serve/feed one another in so many ways. Writing travels the road inward, teaching, the road out - helping OTHERS move inward - it is an honor to be with others in the spirit of writing and encouragement.
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I am looking for the human who admits his flaws Who shocks the adversary By being kinder not stronger What would that be like? We don't even know
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We start out as little bits of disconnected dust.
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It was terrible when a single conversation with someone determined your whole future relationship.
Naomi Shihab Nye
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The thousands small birds of January in their smooth soaring cloud finding the trees.
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I'm writing mostly to thank you for living you eighty years and to tell you I love you and think of you often.
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Anyone who says, “Here’s my address, write me a poem,” deserves something in reply. So I’ll tell you a secret instead: poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes, they are sleeping. They are the shadows drifting across our ceilings the moment before we wake up. What we have to do is live in a way that lets us find them.
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Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth.
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Peter Conners stunning prose poems are packed with keen sensitivity, dreaminess, and wit. I love his time travels, the vibrant layering of image and detail. Try taking walks as you are reading this book- the dazzle of landscapes, inner and outer, feel replenished and rich. This is language and vision I want to come home to again and again.
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There is a place to stand where you can see so many lights you forget you are one of them.
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