Naomi Shihab Nye

You're so good about this on social media.

I'm always like, oh, I didn't know Naomi Shihab Nye had a poem.

You're very good and generous about letting people know.

So Naomi, she had a nice new book.

even if that's not the style that I write in, that I'm drawn to.

I think in terms of the business of poetry, there are poets out there like, let's say, Naomi Shihab Nye, who is so generous with her work.

Interacting with her, asking her for permission to reprint a poem has taught me how I really want to be both in the world and in poetry world, which is generous, open, willing to share, willing to say yes to a lot of things.

Oh, I love that.

We have a whole bunch of poets performing alongside a percussionist that morning in the Victoria Theater inside NJPAC.

They include poets like Meg Day, Tongo Eisen-Martin, Ricky Laurentis, Rajiv Mohabir, Naomi Shihab Nye, Jose Olivares, Danette Smith.

So that's going to be a really beautiful opening session on Saturday morning.

Another session that I am so excited about for on Saturday is The Future is Female with Elizabeth Acevedo.

So many favorite.

And then I have to name Naomi Shihab Nye, who I go around saying is my favorite poem in Gate A4, which is my favorite poem.

Uh-huh.

Which I read, you know, at my wedding, at my farewell event.

Yeah.

And you know, just thinking of anot- a line from another poet, um, Naomi Shihab Nye, a mutual friend of ours, who says, "The shared world, that's the world I wanna live in."

in."I love the way in that poem you, you choose a word from another language and find a way to let it inform you.

I mean, I, I love doing this too.

And that brings on empathy, and that's something that we need to work on all the time.

I think of, um, Naomi, Naomi Shihab Nye with her poems, and Joy Harjo, where they write about hard stuff, but boy, they make you really get in there and feel.

So that's, you know, I think that's what I aspire to in reading other poems, other poets, is to get into how they're, um, how they're making you feel and understand somebody else's world.

And, and that, a- and even though it's somebody else, and their experiences are entirely different, there's so many similarities.

Sure.

Um, so in thinking about that, um, you know, I, I thought of, uh, Naomi Shihab Nye, who always says, "Your, your life is your poem."

Mm-hmm.

Uh, your life is your poetry, and that's been true for me.

You'll hear her health journey as our conversation explores embodiment and experiences of physical loss, injuries, and healing, even after a heart transplant.

Caitlin shares all this side by side with the well-loved, often shared poem, Kindness, by Naomi Shihab Nye.

In this conversation, Caitlin and I talk about the inevitable discovery of kindness out of loss.

I'm so excited to be here with my guest today, Caitlin Amos.

I actually don't know.

I was trying to look through old emails and try to figure out when I first received this poem.

But the poem I'm going to read is called Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye.

And you gave this to me at some point.