From: Kathleen Horning <horning>
Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2003 08:06:41 -0500

Cathy, you've written a wonderful tribute to Naomi Shihab Nye, and to the power of poetry in general with your recent message. It's heartening to hear that Marquette has chosen "19 Varieties of Gazelle" as the book everyone in the city is invited to read and discuss. What a great idea to discuss poetry! I hope you will report back to us to let us know how things went with the program.

I also appreciated reading how you used Naomi's books to introduce poetry to education students. For someone who is "a bit shy of poetry," you seem to know exactly how to present it. I would imagine that your enthusiasm is contagious. I'm glad you quoted Naomi's line from the ALAN article ("we think in poetry.") It makes me think, too, of all the work Naomi has done as a poet in the schools, introducing poetry to students and encouraging them to write their own. You can often get a good sense of this aspect of Naomi's work from the introductions to her poetry anthologies. I'm thinking especially of the intro to "What Have You Lost," in which she talks about using that question as a starting point in her work with young people. She's found that everyone has lost something and whether the loss is big or small, it stirs feelings. She has an uncanny ability to find the common thread in all our lives.

KTH




Kathleen T. Horning, Director Cooperative Children's Book Center University of Wisconsin-School of Education 4290 Helen C. White Hall 600 North Park St. Madison, WI 53706

horning at education.wisc.edu Voice: 608&3721 Fax: 608&2I33 www.education.wisc.edu/ccbc/
Received on Tue 23 Sep 2003 08:06:41 AM CDT