NAOMI SHIHAB NYE: "...My father was very disappointed by war and fighting. And he thought
language could help us out of cycles of revenge and animosity. And so,
as a journalist, he always found himself asking lots of questions and
trying to gather information. He was always very clear to underscore the
fact that Jewish people and Arab people were brother and sister. That
was in every story that he told.
He would say, this conflict came about because of political decisions
or decisions made by powers in different countries, and it's not the
fault of Jewish people and Arab people. He was convinced all through his
life that resolution was possible.
"Many asked me not to forget them. Where do you keep all these
people, the shoemaker with his rumpled cough, the man who twisted straws
into brooms? My teacher, oh, my teacher. I will always cry when I think
of my teacher. The olive farmer who lost every inch of ground, every
tree, who sat with head in his hands in his son's living room for years
after."
In the poem "Many Asked Me Not to Forget Them," I found the line,
that actual line in my father's notebooks after he died, and then the
poem I wrote came out in his voice. And when he died, and I really
couldn't imagine how I would continue to live without this voice, until I
realized I would always have that voice in my days. It was in my DNA,
it was in my memory.
"I tucked them into my drawer with cufflinks and bow ties,
touched them each evening before I slept, wished them happiness and
peace, peace in the heart. No wonder we all got heart trouble."
I do think that all of us think in poems. I think of a poem as being
deeper than headline news. You know how they talk about breaking news
all the time, that -- if too much breaking news, trying to absorb all
the breaking news, you start feeling really broken. And you need
something that takes you to a place that's a little more timeless, that
kind of gives you a place to stand to look out at all these things.
Otherwise, you just feel assaulted by all of the tragedy in the world...
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