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A poem is a cup of words open to the sky and wind in a bucket.

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
Buckets
Cups
Poem
Sky
Wind
Open
Words
Bucket

More quotes by Naomi Shihab Nye

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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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I'm not interested in who suffered the most. I'm interested in people getting over it.
Naomi Shihab Nye
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Let me peer out at the world through your lens. (Maybe I'll shudder, or gasp, or tilt my head in a question.) Let me see how your blue is my turquoise and my orange is your gold. Suddenly binary stars, we have startling gravity. Let's compare scintillation - let's share starlight.
Naomi Shihab Nye
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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.
Naomi Shihab Nye
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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.
Naomi Shihab Nye
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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.
Naomi Shihab Nye
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Read, Read, and then Read some more. Always Read. Find the voices that speak most to YOU. This is your pleasure and blessing, as well as responsibility!
Naomi Shihab Nye
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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.
Naomi Shihab Nye
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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.
Naomi Shihab Nye
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What did exclusivity ever have to offer but a distorted, unrealistic view of the world? People who stuck only to their own kind were scared people.
Naomi Shihab Nye
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our limbs which had already traveled far beyond her world, carrying the click of distances in the smooth, untroubled soles of their shoes.
Naomi Shihab Nye
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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
Naomi Shihab Nye
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We dropped our troubles into the lap of the storyteller, and they turned into someone else's.
Naomi Shihab Nye
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I do think that all of us think in poems.
Naomi Shihab Nye
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Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
Naomi Shihab Nye
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We start out as little bits of disconnected dust.
Naomi Shihab Nye
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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.
Naomi Shihab Nye
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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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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!
Naomi Shihab Nye
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I support all people on earth who have bodies like and unlike my body.
Naomi Shihab Nye