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Article: Naomi Shihab Nye: Portrait of a Palestinian-American Poet
- Article from:
- The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs
- Article date:
- August 1, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright American Educational Trust Aug 2006. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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Why are we so monumentally slow?
Soldiers stalk a pharmacy:
big guns, little pills.
If you tilt your head just slightly
It's ridiculous.
The words are those of Naomi Shihab Nye, from her poem "Jerusalem."
Her father, a middle-class Palestinian from Jerusalem, lost his home and everything he owned in 1948. He put down roots in St. Louis, Missouri, where, in 1952, Naomi Shihab was born.
"My first images of Palestine were the thin blue airletter sheets that he would mail to Palestine, then receive in the mail," his daughter recently recalled. "How the light would come through those translucent pages! There was something magical about words that had travelled so far."
The author of many books ...