The Citizenship of Grief: A Dialogue Between [poet] Naomi Shihab Nye and [poet] Robert Bonazzi

http://www.texasobserver.org/feature/item/18159-the-citizenship-of-grief

by Robert Bonazzi Published on: Tuesday, November 01, 2011
[Robert Bonazzi’s latest books of poems are Maestro of Solitude (Wings Press 2007) and The Scribbling Cure (Pecan Grove Press 2011).]

Naomi Shihab Nye (age 8) with her father Aziz Shihab

Naomi Shihab Nye’s latest book of poems, Transfer (BOA Editions), focuses on her loving relationship with her late father, Aziz Shihab. She has written or edited 32 books in various genres, including 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems from the Middle East, a finalist for the National Book Award. Aziz Shihab’s memoir of Palestine, Does the Land Remember Me?, was published in 2007. Shihab Nye is poetry editor at the Observer.

Author and editor Robert Bonazzi recently talked to her about Transfer.

Robert Bonazzi: The loss of a parent tends to be a primal event and these poems track a deep grieving which—despite the claims of clinicians as to the “ stages of grief” —follow no prescribed pattern. What was your strategy for sequencing? Were the poems placed chronologically as written or were finished texts arranged later? Was your arrangement accomplished by a conscious method or by an intuitive aesthetic?

Naomi Shihab Nye: Definitely intuitive arrangement, on the floor, page-by-page, later. It would have been impossible to structure a sequencing beforehand, and chronological arrangement would be peculiar at best. The poems wanted to move (in the second part of the book) back into the world, which for me was entirely changed by my father’s new absence and deeper presence.

RB: The second section of Transfer (“ Just Call Me Aziz” ) contains 11 poems that take their titles from lines in your father’s notebooks. Unlike your other elegies about him, wherein the first-person narrator usually represents your voice, these seem to actually inhabit his voice, giving the convincing sense that Aziz had written them. We know you wrote the poems, but to what degree do they derive from recollections of his stories and the way he told them?

NSN: His voice inhabits my memory and ear so strongly that simply using his own floating lines as titles invited his voice to take over. This wasn’t planned beforehand, it just happened while writing. Aziz was skeptical of adjectives, as journalists often are, so the poems in his voice have fewer of those than my own might have. He loved short sentences and blunt diction. Writing this section made me laugh. I found things out. It was comforting to feel his own voice emerging so easily—I wouldn’t mind writing more poems of this kind. Guess it’s another way to keep that conversation going—as Alastair Reid mentioned [in an epigraph to Nye’s “Introduction”]. My father left a lot of scrappy notebooks, after all. Many more titles awaiting …

RB:All cultures have story-telling traditions—from oral history to literature. Since your narrative poems and Aziz’s autobiographical texts about his exile from Palestine were often created from actual events, can we assume that you place great value upon story- telling, especially stories generated through the Palestinian culture?

NSN: Without a doubt, I do. No one can deny your story, or the way you remember what you describe as your story. They may argue with your opinion, but not your story.

RB: Recently, we are hearing the long-silenced Palestinian narrative spoken in its own voice (President Mahmoud Abbas spoke about statehood at the UN). Do you sense new possibilities for human rights, self-determination and peace in these developments?

NSN: Definitely I do. And it is long, long overdue. Everyone with a moderate, reasonable sensibility in any country hopes for it—Palestinians and Israeli Jews and everyone who cares about balance in the region and mutual respect....READ MORE

Time for reason to triumph over propaganda and fanaticism

"Wasn't it time for reason to triumph over propaganda and fanaticism?" Aziz Shihab,

author of

Does the Land Remember Me?
A MEMOIR OF PALESTINE

Chapter 8
In a Bedouin's Tent
page 82

ATFP's Fifth Annual Gala 2010: Building Palestine, the Indispensable State for Peace..."It's late, but everything comes next."

"My father, journalist Aziz Shihab, spoke up for Palestine every day of his life. He wrote, "Try as we could, my old people, the Palestinians and I, could never get into the good graces of Americans. Strong dusty winds against us were constantly blowing...Americans blinded from knowing, or caring, that my land was dear to me."

He would want me to thank you all tonight -- for knowing, and caring. We believe the jobs of peacemaking, inclusion, and mutual respect and support, belong to all of us.

As the end of my poem "Jerusalem" says, "It's late, but everything comes next."" Naomi Shihab Nye accepting the ATFP award for Excellence in the Arts, at the ATFP Fifth Annual Gala, Washington, D.C., October 20, 2010.

ATFP's Fifth Annual Gala 2010: Building Palestine, the Indispensable State for Peace

http://www.americantaskforce.org/gala_2010

WASHINGTON DC, October 21 -- “I promise you this: The Obama administration will not turn our backs on the Palestinian people or the people of Israel,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told an audience of over 700 in a major policy address last night. She spoke at the Fifth Annual Gala of the American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP) in Washington DC. Expressing the administration's determination to push forward with the peace process, she said, “we will continue working every day to achieve the just, lasting and comprehensive peace that has been a cornerstone of U.S. policy for years. We believe it is possible, it is necessary, and it is the only way.”

Sec. Clinton also emphasized the importance of the Palestinian state and institution building program which, she said, “which may receive fewer headlines but it is also critically important.” Sec. Clinton praised Palestinian economic development and the performance of the new security forces, but noted that during her recent visit to Ramallah “it was impossible to forget the painful history of a people who have never had a state of their own. For most Americans, it is hard to imagine living behind checkpoints and roadblocks, without the comforts of peace or the confidence of self-determination.” She affirmed that, “The legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people will never be satisfied until there is a two-state solution that ensures dignity, justice, and security for all.”

Sec. Clinton thanked ATFP President Ziad Asali, “for your leadership of this important organization, and for your steadfast support of peace.” She said the Task Force has “provided a welcome voice of reason and steady advocacy on behalf of a just, lasting, and comprehensive peace in the Middle East.” She also noted and praised the charitable efforts of ATFP's sister organization, American Charities for Palestine, and congratulated the evenings' honorees, quoting from the work of one of them, poet Naomi Shihab Nye.

In his introduction to the Secretary, Dr. Asali noted that “has transformed the way in which expectations are defined and achievement evaluated.” He told the Secretary that, “with boundless courage and tireless drive, you beat long odds and overcame overwhelming obstacles. The Palestinians too are creating something which is difficult, they too chafe against a history which has discouraged veering from its path, and they too are being told that it cannot be done.” He also affirmed that, “Your bold statement that our country must assure that the 'Palestinians build the institutions of their future state, an effort which must continue during the negotiations' is one that we at ATFP applaud and support without reservation."

After a letter of support from President Abbas read by Ambassador Maen Areikat, ATFP honored four outstanding Palestinian Americans: Colonel (Ret.) Peter Mansoor, Jr. Chair of Military History at Ohio State University and former Executive Officer to General David Petraeus; renowned poet Naomi Shihab Nye; award-winning playwright Betty Shamieh, and Ghassan Salameh, an Executive Vice President at Booz Allen Hamilton. The Gala audience was also treated to a performance by the acclaimed Palestinian-American comedienne Maysoon Zayid.

Jerusalem

"Let's be the same wound if we must bleed.
Let's fight side by side, even if the enemy
is ourselves: I am yours, you are mine."
-Tommy Olofsson, Sweden

I'm not interested in
Who suffered the most.
I'm interested in
People getting over it.

Once when my father was a boy
A stone hit him on the head.
Hair would never grow there.
Our fingers found the tender spot
and its riddle: the boy who has fallen
stands up. A bucket of pears
in his mother's doorway welcomes him home.
The pears are not crying.
Later his friend who threw the stone
says he was aiming at a bird.
And my father starts growing wings.

Each carries a tender spot:
something our lives forgot to give us.
A man builds a house and says,
"I am native now."
A woman speaks to a tree in place
of her son. And olives come.
A child's poem says,
"I don't like wars,
they end up with monuments."
He's painting a bird with wings
wide enough to cover two roofs at once.

Why are we so monumentally slow?
Soldiers stalk a pharmacy:
big guns, little pills.
If you tilt your head just slightly
it's ridiculous.

There's a place in my brain
Where hate won't grow.
I touch its riddle: wind, and seeds.
Something pokes us as we sleep.

It's late but everything comes next.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye ~

(19 Varieties of Gazelle)

Does the Land Remember Me? A Memoir of Palestine by Aziz Shihab

Does the Land Remember Me?
A Memoir of Palestine

by Aziz Shihab

Aziz Shihab is the father of poet Naomi Shihab Nye

Aziz Shihab with his daughter Naomi, 1953