Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    This Same Sky: A Collection of Poems from Around the World
    This Same Sky: A Collection of Poems from Around the World
    This Same Sky: A Collection of Poems from Around the World
    Ebook240 pages1 hour

    This Same Sky: A Collection of Poems from Around the World

    By Naomi Shihab Nye

    4.5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    A multicultural anthology of poems represents the poetic voices, observations, traditions, and stories of people from some sixty countries around the world.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAladdin
    Release dateJun 24, 2008
    ISBN9781439108185
    This Same Sky: A Collection of Poems from Around the World
    Author

    Naomi Shihab Nye

    Naomi Shihab Nye was born in St. Louis, Missouri. Her father was a Palestinian refugee and her mother an American of German and Swiss descent, and she spent her adolescence in both Jerusalem and San Antonio, Texas. She earned her BA from Trinity University in San Antonio. Naomi Shihab Nye describes herself as a “wandering poet.” She has spent more than forty years traveling the country and the world, leading writing workshops and inspiring students of all ages. Naomi Shihab Nye is the author and/or editor of more than thirty books. Her books of poetry for adults and young people include 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East (a finalist for the National Book Award); A Maze Me: Poems for Girls; Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners; Honeybee (winner of the Arab American Book Award); Cast Away: Poems of Our Time (one of the Washington Post’s best books of 2020); Come with Me: Poems for a Journey; and Everything Comes Next: Collected and New Poems. Her other volumes of poetry include Red Suitcase; Words Under the Words; Fuel; Transfer; You & Yours; Mint Snowball; and The Tiny Journalist. Her collections of essays include Never in a Hurry and I’ll Ask You Three Times, Are You Okay?: Tales of Driving and Being Driven. Naomi Shihab Nye has edited nine acclaimed poetry anthologies, including This Same Sky: Poems from Around the World; The Space Between Our Footsteps: Poems from the Middle East; Time You Let Me In: 25 Poets Under 25; and What Have You Lost? Her picture books include Sitti’s Secrets, illustrated by Nancy Carpenter, and her acclaimed fiction includes Habibi; The Turtle of Oman (winner of the Middle East Book Award) and its sequel, The Turtle of Michigan (honorable mention for the Arab American Book Award). Naomi Shihab Nye has been a Lannan Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a Witter Bynner Fellow (Library of Congress). She has received a Lavan Award from the Academy of American Poets, the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award, the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award, the Paterson Poetry Prize, four Pushcart Prizes, the Robert Creeley Award, and ""The Betty,"" from Poets House, for service to poetry, and numerous honors for her children’s literature, including two Jane Addams Children’s Book Awards. In 2011 Nye won the Golden Rose Award given by the New England Poetry Club, the oldest poetry-reading series in the country. Her work has been presented on National Public Radio on A Prairie Home Companion and The Writer’s Almanac. She has been featured on two PBS poetry specials, including The Language of Life with Bill Moyers, and she also appeared on NOW with Bill Moyers. She has been affiliated with the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin for twenty years and served as poetry editor at the Texas Observer for twenty years. In 2019–20 she was the poetry editor for the New York Times Magazine. She is Chancellor Emeritus for the Academy of American Poets and laureate of the 2013 NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature, and in 2017 the American Library Association presented Naomi Shihab Nye with the 2018 May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecture Award. In 2018 the Texas Institute of Letters named her the winner of the Lon Tinkle Award for Lifetime Achievement. She was named the 2019–21 Young People's Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation. In 2020 she was awarded the Ivan Sandrof Award for Lifetime Achievement by the National Book Critics Circle. In 2021 she was voted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Naomi Shihab Nye is professor of creative writing-poetry at Texas State University.

    Read more from Naomi Shihab Nye

    Related to This Same Sky

    Related ebooks

    YA Social Themes For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      Be Bold

      Jun 12, 2019

      Be Bold
      12 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Loneliness Project

      Jun 16, 2021

      The Loneliness Project
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      EDITOR’S Note

      Jun 12, 2024

      ABOUT NINETY PAGES INTO JULIA PHILLIPS’S NEW NOVEL, Bear, I encountered one of those put-down-the-book- and-stare passages that anyone who is passionate about reading and writing savors. This particular paragraph concerns the two sisters at the novel

      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      'Seeing Ghosts' Navigates The Melancholia Of Loss — Of People, Places And Identities

      Aug 25, 2021

      While this book would not exist without Kat Chow's grief — while Chow would not be the person she is now without that grief — her project here aims for more than just mapping her primal anguish.

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Think What a Poem Might Do: A Conversation with Jill Bialosky and Matthew Zapruder

      Aug 17, 2017

      What, if anything, do you think poetry can do for us in these difficult times? The post Think What a Poem Might Do: A Conversation with Jill Bialosky and Matthew Zapruder appeared first on The Millions.

      10 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Ada Zhang

      Jun 14, 2023

      Ada Zhang
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Reconsidering Pablo Neruda in Light of ‘The Poet’s Calling’

      Jun 4, 2018

      When Pablo Neruda was expelled from France in 1952, he wrote this to his beloved countrymen in Chile: “The future of humanity may be endangered in the hands of a few evil men, but it does not belong to them. The future of man is ours, because we are

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      More Poetry, Please

      Oct 6, 2021

      I’LL never forget the first time I read Edward Thomas’s As the Team’s Head-Brass. I had been familiar with Adlestrop from school and, later, had been introduced to Old Man and The Manor Farm (all three beautiful, rural vignettes), but the gentle pace

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      New Titles

      Oct 10, 2018

      By George Keithley George Braziller, Inc. “The Donner Party is one of the three or four finest book-length American poems ever written.”—Poetry. “Out of the western migration of the 1840s…Keithley has made a lean, taut narrative poem that moves with

      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Commonplace Book

      Mar 4, 2024

      To Err Is Human; to Forgive, Supine —S. J. Perelman, Baby, It’s Cold Inside, 1970 You must know the bees have come early this year too: I see them visit aster, sweet Williams, bleeding hearts, and azalea blossoms hardy enough to not have crisped with

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Commonplace Book

      Jun 1, 2021

      The night of the year is approaching. What have we done with our talent? All nature prompts and reproves us. How early in the year it begins to be late! —Henry David Thoreau, Journal, August 18, 1853 I thought of Carthage, Baalbek, Jerusalem, Rome,

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A History of Killing Sparrows

      Oct 15, 2021

      A History of Killing Sparrows
      12 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Sun’s Tale

      Jun 8, 2022

      The Sun’s Tale
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Call Of The Desert

      Jan 3, 2023

      T.E. Lawrence was taken by his guides to a ruin in the desert of North Syria. The Arabs believed that it had been built by a prince for his queen and that its clay had been kneaded with the essential oils of flowers. As Lawrence wrote in Seven Pillar

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Year in Reading: Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

      Dec 20, 2018

      Here are some of the books that made me feel joy and wonder and hurt and left me feeling reminded of the magic in the world. The post A Year in Reading: Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah appeared first on The Millions.

      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Must-Read Poetry: July 2018

      Jul 5, 2018

      Here are six notable books of poetry publishing in July. A Memory of the Future by Elizabeth Spires A book worthy of pondering—“how to find myself / when a self is so small”—Spires offers so many questions and considerations, yet they all return to o

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      selections from YOU ARE HERE: POETRY IN THE NATURAL WORLD

      May 1, 2024

      As part of her signature project, You Are Here, U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón commissioned fifty-two contemporary American poets to observe and reflect on their place in the natural world. The volume was published by Milkweed Editions in April 2024. O

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Where We Write

      Feb 9, 2017

      Where We Write
      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Listening to Jordan

      Oct 15, 2019

      Listening to Jordan
      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Quarantine Bookshelf

      Mar 19, 2021

      The Quarantine Bookshelf
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Hermit Of Suvarov

      Jul 30, 2020

      The Hermit Of Suvarov
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Quarantine Bookshelf

      Mar 19, 2021

      The Quarantine Bookshelf
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Specificity of Art

      Oct 10, 2022

      Like most writers, Jill Madden Melchoir has been putting pen to paper for as long as she can remember. But perhaps unlike most writers, Melchoir’s writing didn’t start with stories or poems: “It was writing lists of stuff I liked, literally just list

      8 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for This Same Sky

    4.5/5

    17 ratings1 review

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      This Same Sky: A Collection of Poems from Around the World, selected by Naomi Shihab Nye, contains poems from 129 poets in 68 different countries. The collection’s table of contents is separated by topic: ie., “Words and Silences”, Dreams and Dreamers”, “Families”, This Earth and Sky In Which We Live”, “Losses”, and “Human Mysteries”. From the beginning, the selection creates a reading atmosphere allowing the human connection to resonate. No matter what part of the world one lives, we experience strong similarities. An impressive feature in the back of the book, the author includes a brief set of notes on each of the poets included in her book. This is a wonderful starting point for students interested in finding out more about the poets. Following the several pages of notes, Nye includes a map of the world identifying the countries from where the contributors came. Next, she includes a page of further reading suggestions. Also in the back of the book is an index to the countries so students can easily search for the countries represented in the collection. Finally, there is an index to the poets. This is a great collection for a high school library.

    Book preview

    This Same Sky - Naomi Shihab Nye

    THIS SAME SKY

    A Collection of Poems from around the World

    NAOMI SHIHAB NYE

    Virginia Norey

    Christy Hale

    Deborah Maverick Kelley

    Aladdin Paperbacks An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020

    THIS SAME SKY

    A Collection of Poems from around the World

    Selected by NAOMI SHIHAB NYE

    ALADDIN PAPERBACKS

    A NOTE TO READERS:

    At the time this book went to press, several areas around the world were

    in the midst of political turmoil and upheaval. Because of this poets are

    sometimes presented with the region rather than the country from which they come.

    First Aladdin Paperbacks edition May 1996

    Copyright © 1992 by Naomi Shihab Nye

    Pages 203-207 constitute an extension of the copyright page.

    Aladdin Paperbacks

    An imprint of Simon & Schuster

    Children’s Publishing Division

    1230 Avenue of the Americas

    New York, NY 10020

    www.SimonandSchuster.com

    All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form

    Also available in a Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers edition

    Map by Virginia Norey

    Designed by Christy Hale

    Part-title art by Deborah Maverick Kelley

    The text of this book was set in Weiss.

    Printed and bound in the United States of America

    10 9

    The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

    This same day: a collection of poems from around the world

    / selected by Naomi Shihab Nye.—1st ed.

    p. cm.

    Includes bibliographical references and index.

    Summary: A poetry anthology in which 129 poets from sixty-eight different countries celebrate the natural world and its human and animal inhabitants.

    ISBN 0-02-768440-7

    ISBN 13: 978-0-689-80630-8

    eISBN 13: 978-1-439-10818-5

    1. Children’s poetry.

    2. Children’s poetry—Translations into English. [1. Poetry—Collections.]

    I. Nye, Naomi Shihab.

    PN6109.97.T49 1992

    808.81′936—dc20                              92-11617

    ISBN 0-689-80630-2 (Aladdin pbk.)

    For the wonderful educators I have been privileged to know over the years, especially Harriett B. Lane, John D. Brantley, William O. Walker, Francisco Treto-Garcia, Claude Zetty, Robert Flynn, Carol Mengden, Mary Howard, Paul Rode, Amy Freeman Lee, Maury Maverick, Jr., Bill White, Rubina Schroeder, Sandee Willis, Donna Northouse, Leonard Nathan, William Stafford, Kim Stafford, Rosemary Catacalos, Brenda Goins, Barbara Orlovsky, Christine Eastus, Samuel Hazo, Lorna Hung, and Carolyn Helfman, who encouraged me to gather this book.

    CONTENTS

    Introduction,

    House of Spring, Musō Soseki,

    WORDS AND SILENCES: "Sawdust from under the Saw"

    Once I got a postcard from the Fiji Islands, Jaan Kaplinski,

    Old Mountains Want to Turn to Sand, Tommy Olofsson,

    The Meaning of Simplicity, Yannis Ritsos,

    Poetry Was Like This, Al Mahmud,

    The Pen, Muhammad al-Ghuzzi,

    The Question Mark, Gevorg Emin,

    The Gatherer, Ali al-Mak,

    Lizard, Bundgård Povlsen,

    Between Ebb and Flow, Fadwa Tuqan,

    Crowned Crane,

    A Tree Within, Octavio Paz,

    A Short Story, David Escobar Galindo,

    Life of the Cricket, Jorge Carrera Andrade,

    Coils the Robot, Floria Herrero Pinto,

    from Altazor, Vicente Huidobro,

    Paper Doll, Guadalupe Morfín,

    Distances of Longing, Fawziyya Abu Khalid,

    At the Beach, Kemal Ozer,

    Monkeys, Klara Koettner-Benigni,

    Freedom, Wimal Dissanayake,

    Lamento, Tomas Tranströmer,

    Wordless Day, Chang Shiang-hua,

    DREAMS AND DREAMERS: Eyes the Color of Sky

    In the Kitchen, Jean Joubert,

    A Headstrong Boy, Gu Cheng,

    Wanting to Move, Vijaya Mukhopadhyay,

    The Cucumber, Nazim Hikmet,

    The Tin Bird, Ramón C. Sunico,

    On My Birthday, Farhad Mazhar,

    The Orphan, Muhammad al-Maghut,

    Wildpeace, Yehuda Amichai,

    Healing, Yannis Ritsos,

    Happy as a Dog’s Tail, Anna Swir,

    Picnic to the Earth, Shuntarō Tanikawa,

    Why There Are No Cats in the Forest, Simeon Dumdum, Jr.,

    Song, Cecilia Meireles,

    The Sick-Room, R. A. Simpson,

    The Shadow Inside Me, Tommy Olofsson,

    One day I asked the mirror facing me, Tialuga Sunia Seloti,

    The Prison Cell, Mahmud Darwish,

    A Sailor’s Memoirs, Muhammad al-Fayiz,

    Where is the heart I am calling?, Roberto Juarroz,

    Day-Dream, Samarendra Sengupta,

    The Parakeets, Alberto Blanco,

    A Dream of Paradise in the Shadow of War, Muneer Niazi,

    Salt and Memory, Zoltán Zelk,

    My Great Grand Uncle, Tarapada Ray,

    Magic, Dahlia Ravikovitch,

    FAMILIES: The First Tying

    Wolf-Ancestry, Vasko Popa,

    To the Ancestors,

    Childhood, Jean Joubert,

    Remembering, Xue Di,

    Sparrow,

    Transformations, Tadeusz Rózewicz,

    Souvenir of the Ancient World, Carlos Drummond de Andrade,

    Industrial Childhood, Sharon Stevenson,

    I Was Born in Jacinto Vera, Liber Falco,

    Weights, Les Murray,

    Small Wants, Bibhu Padhi,

    Believe It or Not, Nicolai Kantchev,

    Brownout, Tony Perez,

    Atong, Benilda S. Santos,

    Atong and His Goodbye, Benilda S. Santos,

    Father and Son, Tomasz Jastrun,

    Petrified Minute, Zoltán Zelk,

    Companion, Manjush Dasgupta,

    A Pearl, Fawziyya Abu Khalid,

    A New Dress, Ruth Dallas,

    Vistasp, Gieve Patel,

    Poem for My Son, Bibhu Padhi,

    An Appointment, Chang Shiang-hua,

    The First Shoe, Máire Mhac an tSaoi,

    Grandmother, Sameeneh Shirazie,

    My Life Story, Lan Nguyen,

    The Mushroom River, Xue Di,

    Letter from My Son, Shihab Sarkar,

    Summer, Jayanta Mahapatra,

    Jasmine, Kyongjoo Hong Ryou,

    Footpath, Stella Ngatho,

    Family Portrait, Eka Budianta,

    THIS EARTH AND SKY IN WHICH WE LIVE. Water That Used to Be a Cloud

    Mindoro, Ramón C. Sunico,

    Dawn, Edith Södergran,

    Grass, Tom Kristensen,

    The Land of Mists, Kwang-kyu Kim,

    Spring Poem, Colleen Thibaudeau,

    Dew, Linus Suryadi AG,

    Beside a stone three, Christine M. Krishnasami,

    Country Memory, Leticia Herrera Alvarez,

    Cuernavaca, Aline Pettersson,

    Mountain Tambourine, Peter van Toorn,

    The sodden moss sinks underfoot …, Aleš Debeljak,

    Improvisation (Eching), Kevin Ferryman,

    Greedy snowslide,

    The Sky Is Vast, Pramila Khadun,

    The Penguin, Ricardo Yáñez,

    The Open Shutter, Karl Krolow,

    Wind’s Foam, Al Mahmud,

    The Squirrel, Saleem Barakat,

    The Birth of a Stone, Kwang-kyu Kim,

    Caring for Animals, Jon Silkin,

    Autumn and the Sea, Javier Heraud,

    Pitcher, Renée Ferrer de Arréllaga,

    Cleaned the Crocodile’s Teeth,

    Cat, Jibananda Das,

    The Moon Rises Slowly over the Ocean, Xu De-min,

    Stars at Night, Iku Takenaka,

    The Pit Ponies, Leslie Norris,

    Great Aso, Tatsuji Miyoshi,

    Ants, Yusuf al-Sa’igh,

    from Diary of a Woodcutter, Fuad Rifka,

    Under This Sky, Zia Hyder,

    LOSSES: Kissed Trees

    What is it that upsets the volcanoes …, Pablo Neruda,

    There’s an Orange Tree Out There, Alfonso Quijada Urías,

    Horse by Moonlight, Alberto Blanco,

    A Tree, Klara Koettner-Benigni,

    Love, Tymoteusz Karpowicz,

    A Brief Note to the Bag Lady, Ma Sister, Yusuf Eradam,

    A Man Never Cries, José Craveirinha,

    Surprise, Blanca Rodriguez,

    Oh! Oh! Should They Take Away My Stove … My Inexhaustible Ode to Joy, Miron Bialoszewski,

    A Train Is Passing, Poul Borum,

    A Gift Horse, Alamgir Hashmi,

    In the Lebanese Mountains, Nadia Tueni,

    The Garden of a Child, Nirendranath Chakravarti,

    Bicycles, Andrei Voznesensky,

    The Memory of Horses, Rolf Jacobsen,

    Inside, Kim Chiha,

    Home, Nasima Aziz,

    Before the Game, Vasko Popa,

    HUMAN MYSTERIES: White Bracelets

    Napoleon, Miroslav Holub,

    Locked In, Ingemar Leckius,

    Debt, Sunay Akin,

    A Boy’s Head, Miroslav Holub,

    The Ship’s Whistle, Tarapada Ray,

    Sweet Like a Crow, Michael Ondaatje,

    Volunteer Worker, Tony Perez,

    Behind Bars, Fadwa Tuqan,

    On Destiny, Shuntarō Tanikawa,

    For Genevieve, Simeon Dumdum, Jr.,

    Childhood Is the Only Lasting Flower, Ramón Díaz Eterovic,

    Goodness, Benny Andersen,

    The Rhythm of the Tomtom, António Jacinto,

    Do what you like with my face, Amanda Aizpuriete,

    The New Suit, Nidia Sanabria de Romero,

    White Bracelets, Colleen Thibaudeau,

    I Have Ten Legs, Anna Swir,

    The Tongue, Pia Tafdrup,

    A man comes in, his suit is crumpled, Sergei Timofeyev,

    Greenland’s History, Sven Holm,

    The Wall, Tania Diaz Castro,

    Jerusalem, Yehuda Amichai,

    There are times when I can’t move., Roberto Juarroz,

    In his room the man watches, Homero Aridjis,

    The Indians, Roberto Sosa,

    The Labourer, Toolsy Daby,

    Clouds on the Sea, Ruth Dallas,

    Or, Ali Darwish,

    My Share, Salih Bolat,

    Pride, Dahlia Ravikovitch,

    Lucia, Lucia Casalinuovo,

    Far and Close, Gu Cheng,

    At the Ferry, Vijaya Mukhopadhyay,

    Notes on the Contributors,

    Map,

    Suggestions for Further Reading,

    Acknowledgments,

    Index to Countries,

    Index to Poets,

    INTRODUCTION

    The Turkish poet Kandemir Konduk writes about the apple worm: All he knows, all he has seen, all his joys, all his cares, are as big as his apple.

    We cannot live like the apple worm, as much as we may enjoy thinking about him. From over on the next tree, voices are calling to us—from the next orchard even! How are our branches different and our stories similar? And what lovely, larger life becomes ours when we listen to one another?

    Poetry has always devoted itself to bringing us into clearer focus—letting us feel or imagine faraway worlds from the inside. During the Gulf War of 1991, when the language of headline news seemed determined to push human experience into the sanitized distance, I found myself searching for poems by Iraqi poets to carry into classrooms. Even if the poems had been written decades earlier, they helped to give a sense of human struggle and real people living behind those headlines.

    Those of us living in the United States often suffer from a particular literary provinciality, imagining ourselves to be the primary readers and writers of the planet. We forget that our literary history is relatively brief. Writers in Bangalore, India, asked me what it is like to live in a country with such a young soul. When a writer in Dhaka, Bangladesh, said, "We

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1