A friend asked me what I thought about Naomi Shihab Nye’s work 19 Varieties of the Gazelle which I was teaching. I’d heard Nye read in D.C.

“I think she’s a sweet poet,” I said. My friend looked at me, waiting, which made me think: a) sweet is not an intelligent word, b) that perhaps I knew nothing about the poet; c) that one day I would be able to converse with utter intelligence, sophistication, and verve, but today was not the day. I continued, “She read this poem in D.C. about cookie dust.” I then began to try and recount the poem which sounded a little like “this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened,” which likely increased my perception to said friend of my brilliance.

Alas.

Well, that was a semester ago and I’ve just finished reading Honeybee which I’m teaching in my comp class in the spring. And, it’s a sweet book, with sweet poems. (Dear future student, please stop reading now, as I’d hate if you knew all my thoughts on the book before we began our class discussion). Granted, Nye writes poems of witness and certainly here in Honeybee one will find her critique of war and the current-soon-to-be-gone administration, but for me my favorite poems are her sweet ones. Honeybee asks the reader to remember the little pollinators and to try and slow down. In “We Are the People” she writes,

I know people who, the minute they get into their
homes, tell you where they are going next.

I am one of them.

This is nothing to be proud of.

Of course, Nye reveals her bug knowledge , like “Bees take naps, too.”

My favorite two poems in Honeybee are “Before I read The Kite Runner” and “Gate A-4,” the latter being the cookie poem I once tried to describe. Read them. You’ll understand the sweetness. Here’s the first.

UPDATE: I just finished Nye’s You & Yours, which I’m also teaching in another class. In this text, I like her political, powerful, disruptive poems. Go figure.