From: Cathy Sullivan Seblonka <cathys>
Date: Sun, 21 Sep 2003 16:36:57 -0400 (EDT)

I'm not receiving any messages this month about Naomi Shihab Nye and her work. I don't know if we've all been to busy to write or if I have been lost to the list. So, I hope I don't repeat what others have said if the latter is the reason for no communication.

I love Naomi Nye's work and am so very excited because after she gives the Charlotte Zolotow presentation on Oct. 8 in Madison she is gettin on two planes and going on a rather long automobile ride (with my husband and me) to Marquette where she will be giving three presentations. Two will be with the Upper Peninsula Reading Association conference and one will be at my library. We have chosen 19 Varieties of Gazelle as this fall's book selection in our Read! Marquette (one city/one book) program. A local poet, Russel Thorburn, will be leading a workshop on enjoying her poetry and discussing how teachers and parents can motivate children to write poetry. (He's wonderful at this himself.) Our Global Issues/Human Geographies film series will show two short films on Palestine.

The parent club at our middle school bought copies of 19 Varieties for each of the home room teachers who will read a poem or two everyday for the next two weeks (and I hope, continue after that) and one of the teachers is giving extra credit for students who see the films. They are planning on attending her presentation at the library. Two classes in the intermediate school (4 & 5 gr.) will be using the book. And it is selling at the book stores. So our town is quite excited about her visit.

Well, that is the future. Now for the rest.

I had always been a bit shy of poetry, a bit in awe of it, and a bit afraid of it. Two years ago, three education professors at NMU became dissatisfied that some of their edu. students relied on the internet for their poetry selections and thus were missing the beautiful books of poetry available in libraries. They brought their classes to the library and asked me to introduce the students to the world of children's poetry. What fun! I have used Habibi and I Feel Jumpy Around You in my teen book groups to much enjoyment and was very moved by Sitti's Secrets. I turned to her poetry for help. A couple of articles available via a Google search eased any fears about presenting poetry. She wrote about enjoying poetry, how we (people my age) had to work at the rhyme schemes and patterns in poetry, work out its meaning, etc., in school rather than learning to enjoy it, rather than having it read aloud to us. She noticed that "we think in poetry." (from: Lights in the Window on http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/ALAN/spring95/Nye.html)

I open and close my presentation to the students with Naomi's poems. This year I opened with" Steps" (from 19 V) because of the line "One of these children will tell a story that keeps her people alive. We don't know yet which one she is." (Someone on CCBC wrote about this line last April.) I do this because these students will be the ones who assist young people in finding the words to tell such stories. I close with "Valentine for Ernest Mann" in Red Suitcase and in Paul Janeczko's The Place My Words Are Looking For because it hints at where we can find poems, in very ordinary places such as the eyes of skunks, our garages, odd socks, etc. I introduce several of her anthologies along the way esp. This Same Sky. The students arrive feeling the way I did 30 years ago. They are also afraid of poetry for the most part and don't enjoy it. I think Naomi's poetry, along with selections from Douglas Florian, Kristine, O'Connell George, Lee Bennett Hopkins, Jack Prelutsky, Nikki Grimes, Paul Fleischman, Ann Turner, Walter Dean Myers and a host of others, eases their fears and gets them excited about poetry. I hope they go out into the world joyfully spreading poetry near and far. They must grow into poetry during the semester because they sometimes write and send me an end of class poem.

I am opened to more of the world through Naomi's poems. I'm glad her father loves fig trees and inserts them everywhere. I feel the love of those populating her poems. In "The Garden of Abu Mahmoud there is "a hillside in which no inch went unsung." Even "his enormous onions held light." What love the gardener has for his land! Other lines are so moving. "And someone with sky and birds in his heart said this would be a good place for a park." This about Nablus which we hear in the news gets bombed. In "Arabic Coffee" there is a line "and the dreams tucked like pocket handkerchiefs into each day." I feel both love and so much suffering, both despair and faith "like clothes on a line saying You will live long enough to wear me." Naomi's poems can teach us peace.

I mentioned to a friend last week that if I were to die at the end of November, (we're going on an extended vacation after this conference) I would feel that I had done something big with my life and that would have been to introduce Naomi to Marquette.

If you'd like I can tell you how the visit goes.

Cathy





Cathy Sullivan Seblonka Youth Services Librarian Peter White Public Library 217 N. Front St. Marquette, MI 49855
(906) 228?10 fax (906) 22683 e-mail: cathys at uproc.lib.mi.us
Received on Sun 21 Sep 2003 03:36:57 PM CDT