naomi shihab nye

Don’t you love it when a special book finds you just when you need it the most?

Recently Naomi Shihab Nye’s luminous collection, A Maze Me: Poems for Girls (Greenwillow, 2005), caught my attention while I was looking for poems about hope. I had shared “Sifter” here when Nye was first named Young People’s Poet Laureate back in 2019, but hadn’t read any other poems from the book.

Though I’m a longtime Nye fan, I somehow missed this one. Big mistake, huge oversight. Better late than never, but I truly wish I’d read this book 20 years ago.

Can’t remember the last time I was so moved, delighted, inspired, and yes, amazed by a collection of poems for tween girls. Nye actually had me at her Introduction, where she discusses her unsettling junior high years, a time when she was the only one among her friends who didn’t want to leave childhood behind for the grim restrictions of adulthood. She wanted to remain open, observant, impressionable, safe, “amazed forever.”

*photo of Naomi Shihab Nye by Rajah Bose.*

Her poems took me right back to my own tweenhood, a very odd, awkward experience where the only memories I have are of a favorite black velveteen skirt, the SRA Reading Lab (I was stuck at Green while my classmates zoomed up to Aqua), and slipping on a freshly mopped floor while being chased by my algebra teacher (whom I had teased). But I loved the Beatles, and that was enough for me.

Here are two of my favorite poems from A Maze Me: the first is about how small things can have a big impact; and the second describes the person I’m still striving to become.

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“Poetry allows us to cherish what we’re given. Whether it be a heartbreak, a second chance, a soft morning mist, a moment or . . . an onion, poetry, with its impossible-seeming combination of soft lens and precision, brings to our awareness that which might otherwise go unseen, unrecognized, un-cherished. Poetry opens us to life, to surprise, to shadow, to beauty, to insight.”

~ Naomi Shihab Nye

Happy to join my Poetry Friday friends today in celebrating Naomi Shihab Nye, who was just named the 2019-2021 Young People’s Poet Laureate. An award winning poet, essayist, novelist, songwriter, educator, editor, and anthologist, Naomi calls herself “a wandering poet,” and is the first Arab American to earn this honor.

For the past 40+ years she’s traveled all over the country and the world leading workshops and inspiring students of all ages, using her own writing “to attest to our shared humanity.” She is currently Professor in Creative Writing-Poetry at Texas State University, and makes her home in San Antonio.

Naomi is a natural born poet; she wrote her first poem at age six. As Young People’s Poet Laureate, she will work to bring poetry to geographically underserved or rural communities. With her sensitivity, insight, cultural awareness, compassion and enormous heart, she is the seer and sage we need right now to show us how words can heal, unify, delight, and enlighten.