Your life is a poem This is how the poet Naomi Shihab knight sees the world and she teaches how this way of being and writing is possible I'm Krista Tippett and this is On Being Stay with us. B.b.c. News with Simone Comrie Turkey's military together with its Syrian on lies they've taken the city of a free Ninoy is in Syria driving back a Kurdish militia after 2 months battle Turkish officials say forces are clearing explosives and conducting mopping up operations a member of parliament from Turkey's ruling a k party Ahmed better odds chunka says the Turkish army will remain in a free for the time being as long as it is necessary the Turkish army because it is going to pull out the security service hopefully with a political solution achieved inside of Syria Turkey is going to of course deliver this places to Syria the co-chair of the a freend regional council insisted that Kurdish militia forces were still present in a freeman and would How has the invading troops he said the thousands of civilians who fled in recent days had in fact been evacuated to avoid a catastrophe on career has denied Kurdish claims is airstrikes had left many civilians dead. A Syrian government offensive is increasing pressure still further on rebel held areas if Eastern Ghouta state television says the Army is calling for rebels to withdraw immediately from the district of Harasta which is understood to be the smallest of the remaining pockets of resistance in the region near Damascus . The British foreign secretary Boris Johnson says Britain has evidence that Russia has been creating and stockpiling Novacek nerve agents within the last 10 years he was speaking to the b.b.c. About the attack on a former Russian double agent Sergei scruple and his daughter Yulia Here's our Europe regional editor Mike Saunders Boris Johnson says Russia has not only been making chemicals that attack the nervous system it has been working out how to use them for assassinations he insisted that only Russia had made them over chalk or newcomer class of nerve agents that Britain says were used on Sergei and us Korea Parle in the English city of souls Bri 2 weeks ago they both remain critically ill Mr Johnson called it a satirical suggestion for a Russian ambassador to him the British scientists may have made the poison he said it was not the response of a country that believes itself to be innocents helicopters have rescued a number of people from the rooftop of a burning Hotel and Casino in Manila in the Philippines at least 3 people have died in the blaze Michael Bristow reports more than 300 people fled the fire most escaped on foot others climbed down ladders placed as upper floor windows helicopters pluck some from the roof of the hotel near the waterfront in the Philippine capital nearly 20 people were thought to be trapped inside t.v. Pictures showed some of them calling for help the smoke billowed from the building the fire which began on Sunday morning is thought of started in an area that was being renovated although the cause is not yet no b.b.c. News president Trumper said the sacked a deputy director of the f.b.i. Under McCain did not take any notes at meetings between the 2 men the comments follow reports that Mr McCabe delivered detailed notes of their conversations to Robert Muller The special counsel investigating Russian interference in the presidential elections u.s. Media suggests the memos could support claims that Mr Trump sought to obstruct justice. Following weeks of mediation 2 rival Somali clans have signed up to a groundbreaking peace agreement in an effort to end the cycle of revenge killings vendettas going back generations fuel a cycle of violence between clans in Somalia or Africa editor Will Ross reports it took weeks of mediation before the 2 clowns signed up to the agreement with its strict punishments your thirty's of the self declared Republic of Somaliland brokered the deal between the clans in the Sinai agree Jhon where dozens of people have been killed in recent months due to a long running vendettas with a death sentence for the perpetrator of the revenge killing and a $100000.00 fine for the family the hope is the cycle of violence can be broken and the agreement could be adopted by other rival Somali clans 7 men have been sentenced to death in Bangladesh for the murder of the caretaker of a Soofi shrine officials say they are members of an Islamist militant group Jemiah to majority Dean Bangladesh prosecutors said the man confessed to the killing in 2015 saying they believe the caretaker was a heretic the Pyongyang Winter Paralympics have ended with as are many featuring Korean music and downs as well as a tribute to the late British physicist Stephen Hawking the scientist who died last week is seen as an inspiration to many Paralympians having used a wheelchair for decades in his closing address the president of the Paralympic Committee hailed Professor Hawking as a genius on hindered by his disability b.b.c. News. Very rarely do you hear anyone say they write things down or feel worse it's an act that helps you preserve you energizes you in the very doing of it you are living in a poem This is how the poet Naomi Shihab night sees the world and she teaches how this way of being and writing is possible she has engaged the real world power of words since her upbringing between her father's Palestinian homeland and Fergusson Missouri near where her American mother grew up her father was a refugee journalist and she carries forward his hopeful passion his insistence that language must be a way out of cycles of animosity a poem she wrote called kindness is carried around in the pockets and memories of readers around the world before you know kindness is the deepest thing inside you must know sorrow is the other deepest thing you must wake up with sorrow you must speak to it to your voice catches the throat of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore only kindness the ties your shoes and send you out into the day to gaze at bread only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say it is I You have been looking for and then goes with you everywhere like a shadow or friend. I'm Krista Tippett and this is On Being Naomi Shihab NY is a visiting poet all over the world and a professor of creative writing at Texas State University growing up she lived in Ferguson and on the road between Ramallah and Jerusalem and now she lives in San Antonio Texas I had the pleasure of speaking with Naomi in 2016. I always start my interviews by inquiring about their religious or spiritual background of someone's title to it and I just wonder where you'd start reflecting on what that was in your life. All I felt very lucky as a child to have open minded parents and I knew they were open minded because they were only like any other parents I met my friends' parents. I also knew that they didn't practice the religions of their upbringing either one of them so this fascinated me as even a little child and. I would ask a lot of questions there was no sense of a taboo subject my father had not really had a difficult time telling his family that he didn't want to practice Islam he said I will respect it but I don't want to practice it and they had accepted that my mother's family on the other hand had been more hard hearted about her rejection of their German Lutheran Missouri Synod background but this was something both my parents could talk about with each other and with their children you know that people are raised in all kinds of different ways and if it doesn't feel meaningful to you maybe you have to search for more you have to keep searching. And I was a religion major in college the course you are yeah because of my appetite that is a topic and I was fascinated to study more about Zen Buddhism which appealed to me very much from the beginning and it seems like you became a writer at a very young age. Like 765 was I was 6 when I started writing my own poems and 7 when I started sending them out and and just today some students I was talking to in a Skype class in Kuwait. What I love the modern world that we can do these things I was with these students for 2 hours and I feel like we're going to think about them for the rest of my life but one young man asked me how were you brave enough to do that what key view the confidence he said I've been trying to run a publication here at our university campus and I can't get my friends to give me their writing they're not brave enough what gave you confidence and I think just having you know that sense of voice while other people have done it that's what we do if you know words if you composed you might want to share them because they'll have a bigger life if you do that so you know I certainly wasn't thinking about a career I just thought of myself as having a practice you know if you have a practice of writing when you have a lot of pieces of paper on your desk and you could share them if you chose to and it seemed more exciting or illuminating to share them and see what happened next than to just keep them for myself well so I'm very interested in general and this question of you know what poetry works in us but I think even that question itself you know hasn't held the implication that poetry is something separate something distinct but it seems that in you were sensibility you see it as very organic I mean there's I think it was in. In some of your writing for poems by children he said I do think that all of us think and poems I do I do think that. And I think that is very important not feeling separate from text feeling sort of your thoughts as text where the world as it passes through you as a kind of text the story that you would be telling to yourself about this street even as you walk down it or as you drive down it as you look out the window the story you would be telling it always seemed very much to me as a child that I was living in a poem the my life was the poem in fact at this late date I have started putting that on the board of any room I walk into that has a board I just came back from Japan a month ago and every classroom I would just write on the board you are living in a poem and then I would write other things just relating to whatever we were doing in that class but I found the students very intrigued by discussing that you know what do you mean we're living in a poem or when all the time or just when someone talks about poetry and I'd say no when you think when you're in a very quiet place when you're remembering when you're savoring an image when you're allowing your mind calmly to leap from one thought to another that's a poem that's what a poem does and they like that and a girl in fact wrote me a note. In Yokohama on the day that I was leaving her school that has come to be like the most significant note any student has written me in years she said oh here in Japan we have a concept called Hugh told he and it is spaciousness it's a kind of living with spaciousness for example like it's leaving early enough to get somewhere so that you know you're going to arrive early so when you get there you have time to look around or others you have all these different definitions of what you thought he was to her but one of them was after you read a poem just knowing you can hold it you can be in the space of the poem and it can hold you in. It's space and you don't have to explain it you don't have to paraphrase it you just hold it and it allows you to see differently I just love that I mean I think that's what I've been trying to say all these years I should have studied geography. Maybe that's where all areas are. Well well and so I do also think about your Arabic and sister and and the reverence for poetry that is in those cultures and yes you talk a lot about your father and his Reverence for teach the power of words and language and you know and here's a way you feel have appropriated that you say poetry is a form of conversation and it seems to me that a lot of your poems are. Busy holding a conversation or opening line versation that aren't actually happening out there in the culture or in the narrative of kind of how we're telling the story of our time I hope so Krista I really hope that is true and I think that the. Essence of a kind of exchange is what poetry is interested into being the the feeling that you're not battered by thought in the poem but you are sort of as if you're riding the wave of thought as if you're allowing thought to you're shifting you're changing you're looking. You are in a sense ability that allows you that sort of mental emotional spiritual interaction with everything around you I think it's fairy very helpful for mental health actually I mean I really wonder sometimes what it would be like. To live with out that apprehension you know that you could have a thought shape a thought change a thought look at the words in a thought that you could take a word and just sort of use that word I think I said this like 40 years ago the poem use a single word is an work that could get you through the days just by holding a word thinking about it differently and seeing how that word rubs against other words how it interplays with other words you know there's a luxury of that kind of thinking about language in text but it's very basic as well I mean it's it's simple it's invisible it doesn't cost anything yeah so there's a 1000 varieties of. Was that was published after it was published after September 11th but some of the poems in it I seeded Ok September 11th but the poems that related to the Middle East had been sort of scattered throughout my work somewhere in magazines never had been at a book. But I felt at that moment the it was important to gather them together I mean just the last I think this is the final lines are now yes before the postscript of the final stands of the last I call my father we talk around the news it is too much for him neither of his 2 languages can reach it I drive into the country to find cheap casts to plead with the air who calls anyone civilised where can the crying heart graze What does have to do now. Right I imagine that question by way of poetry what is to add to now. That's a question that's been out there I magine in our culture for Americans it's this question it's that we're doing with all of us collectively but especially people. And especially people who cherish you know an awareness of of another culture whoever they are and I think that's it's so strangely appealing these days to large numbers of people I don't know who they are or stand where they're coming from and to not to respect someone else's culture if it doesn't look just like yours and that's exactly the opposite of the way that I grew up in the way I like to think about the world so. The way I feel like the majority of people would prefer to think about you know the minute you place yourself above. What does that do to others so yes I am horrified by the ease with which people Mabel little one another these days as if that were a reasonable thing to do. I'm Krista Tippett and this is On Being today I'm with the poet Naomi she had 9. Also had this fascinating perspective of having I can I me get this right if your father you mostly grew up in Ferguson Missouri which are where yeah it's crazy right where you are the land you're after he is on the and operated eventually and and so how long were you there until you were 12 well I lived in Ferguson til I was 1414 and yes and I was born in greater St Louis my mother's home place my parents met in Kansas but they moved out to Ferguson because it was sort of a. A little bedroom community to downtown St Louis where my mother had grown up and and it had big trees and kids could go off on their bikes and ride around all day and you know there was a more of a rural quality to Ferguson It's a wonderful little community but there was a sense of separation of course in the fifty's and early sixty's that is what we've seen you know the fruits of that come come to be over the years and to think that Ferguson is now household word representing you know injustice is really shocking to those of us who grew up there. That you know when you wrote this wonderful piece about growing up in Ferguson and then your family emigrated back to Palestine in 1966 for a little while and right and the echoes between those 2 places that you called How the echoes between those 2 places and they're separated communities right that was a fascinating. Parallel and so I couldn't resist writing that piece just you know meditating on both places where they were in flames that same summer and the sorrow of injustice you know here does your live in both of them again and the power struggles in both places and I kept wishing my father were alive because I thought he would never believe that Ferguson has come into the international eye in this way at the same time as the people of Palestine are also continuing to struggle so it's. Mysterious how these power structures unfold isn't it and how we're willing to accept them and allow them to prevail without questioning them and something I've started saying over the past few years that kind of help me think about it is you know I have so many Jewish friends both in the United States and other countries who would agree with with this but the idea that there could not be a sort of alliance between big power countries like the United States and Israel Palestine that was more equivalent Why do you have to have only one friend in the region that's like the dark side of junior high in junior high you learn that you could probably have 2 friends that are not exactly alike and you might survive and in fact you'd be a much more interesting person why couldn't the United States have 2 friends why couldn't they ask better questions my father was or was saddened by the imbalance and as a journalist he had to report on it so many times yes and yet you always write about your father insisting on hope to the end yeah fiercely hopeful yeah because he said What else do we have I mean if we're just going to give up and say Ok we cripple we have no more hope we're victims were bitter how much fun of a life is that going to be for anyone that for our children you can't pass that down so. He maintained a joyousness despite But he you know here's another way you've written about what I feel is kind of a philosophy behind your poetry and and you wrote this again about in the the aftermath of September 11th but it applies to all these kinds of examples we've been talking about. He said you know this sense so many people had that everything has changed. And he wrote of the necessity of really questioning and interrogating that feeling and you wrote we can continue to remind ourselves of what is important and try to live in ways nourishing for human beings and continue to nourish our ability to grow in our perceptions to more than we used to now to empathize with distant situations and sorrows and joys that doesn't have to change. There are just so many mysteries about you know people wanting to presume their pain has more of a reality than someone else's period but I think all the holy persons of all backgrounds and faiths have always called upon us to empathize in a more profound way you know to stretch our imaginations to what that other person might be experiencing in itself so basic but but these days when you listen you know to the loud voices. You wonder what happened to that what's happened to the. The awareness that we don't have to be vindictive and continue on in a cycle of revenge and violence and every time Yoko Ono pays to have that full page of The New York Times the war is over. I'm fascinated by that I think well I love to hear her talk about why she continues to do this because we so much wish it were true we'd like to be able to say yes it's true I actually kept that postcard that said war is over that same fought on my wall for years because I so much wanted to believe it and you look at the world and it's not true and you think you know is this just is this manifest positive thinking Well Ok but so here's what I think your contribution as I mean you look at the world in terms of headlines and it's a look at the world a certain way and it's not true from a certain angle from a certain direction it seems to me like one of things you again like what is poetry priest puts poetry is placing it seems like one of the things you draw out is you know just noticing paying a different kind of attention to things that are not quite as apparent to the eye I mean starting with Through Love This is the poem and I want because it please describe how you became a writer Oh right yeah do you know that do you have that by heart I have it right here Ok. Would you like me to read it yes it's very short yeah. Please describe how you became a writer possibly I began writing as a refuge from our insulting 1st grade textbook. Jane come look Dick look where there ever dull are people in the world you had to tell them to look at things why weren't they looking to begin with. That was actually written after you know some students wrote me a survey about being a writer and that was the 1st question on their survey and so I just wrote them that I thought oh I like this myself this is good it's true to your. And you're right and so so I think the one full that on different levels I mean some where you talk about being a 7 year old poet making petite discoveries I love that phrase and again like no you're just saying right well I mean I like the word to Cito it's law and like you know there's a poem you wrote at that an onion and you know I couldn't email and praise all small forgotten marigolds. Crackly paper peeling on the drain board pearly layers in smooth agreement the way a knife enters onion and onion falls apart on the topping block a history revealed I mean this is a way again we're talking about poetry but we're also talking about a way of moving through the world. Thank you for noticing that but I think of something in an essay from from William Irwin and he's lived in many places in his life he lived in France England Mexico Pennsylvania as a child but he has a line where he says I learned from my neighbors everything they would tell me and I think that sort of appetite for knowing that curiosity what grows here what do we need to do how can we improve the soil. That's the way that he lived his whole life and I think that's what poetry does for our places wherever we are do it allows us to cherish what we're given. To countries. Skin remembers how long the years grow when skin is not touched a great tunnel of singleness feather lost from the tail of a bird swirling onto a step swept away by someone who never saw it was a feather skin ate walked slept by itself knew how to raise a seal later and but skin felt it was never seen never known as a land on the map knows like a city hip like a city Leming Dome of the mosque and the 100 corridors of cinnamon and rope. Skin Head hope that's what skin does heals over the scarred place makes a road love means you breathe into countries and skin remembers silk spiny grass deep in the pocket that is skin secret. Even now when skin is not alone it remembers being alone and think something larger but there are travelers that people go places larger than the. You can listen again and share this conversation with Naomi she has night to our website on being dot org I'm Krista Tippett on Being continues in a moment support for being with Krista Tippett comes from the Fetzer Institute helping build the spiritual foundation for a loving world learn more at Fetzer dot org. Teen activists today are finding their voices we were service to show gun violence climate change systemic racism but if we just become like paralyzed in fear nothing will get done do teens have superpowers that adults don't Next Time On to the best of our knowledge from Wisconsin Public Radio and our acts. This morning at 9. Tune in for Philosophy Talk a program that questions everything except your intelligence coming up the power and perils of satire after the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris Pope Francis said that religion should never be the target of satire Well if you can't mock people silly religious What can you know about that have some limits and such not if you believe in freedom of expression the power of ferals of satire and the loss of a Sunday morning at 11 on Calle that $91.00. I'm Krista Tippett and this is On Being today I'm with don't wander poet Naomi she had 9. I know your poem kindness has been really important for many people it's interesting that would you kind of tell because the backstory to that poem My doesn't sound like the circumstances under which you would write a poem about kindness and I said I'd love for you to just tell that story know it and then maybe read it also I really feel amongst all my poems that this was a poem that was given to me I was simply the secretary for the poem I wrote it down but I honestly felt as if it were a female voice speaking in the air across applause and put me on Columbia and my husband and I were on our honeymoon we had just gotten married one week before here in Texas and we had this plan to travel in South America for 3 months and at the end of our 1st week we were robbed of everything and someone else who was on the bus with us was killed and he's the Indian in the in the poem and it was quite a shake up of an experience and what do you do now we didn't have passports we didn't have money we didn't have anything. What do we do 1st where do we go who we talked to and a man came up to us on the street and was simply kind and just looked at us I guess could see our. Disarray in our faces and just asked us in Spanish you know what happened to you and we tried to tell him and he listened to us and he looked so sad and he said I'm very sorry very very sorry that happened in Spanish and he went on and then we went to this little plaza and I sat down and all I had was the notebook in my back pocket and pencil. And my husband was going to hitchhike off to cali a larger city to see about you know getting traveler's checks reinstated remember those archaic thing it's travelers basically yeah I've seen what a new. So this was also a little worrisome to us because you know suddenly we were going to split up and I was going to stay here and he was going to go there and as I sat there alone in a bit of a paralytic night coming on and trying to figure out what I was going to do next. This voice came across the plaza and spoke this part to me spoke it. Wrote it down I was just the scribe So did you want me to read it in the other movie to read it before you know what kindness really is you must lose their things feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth what you held in your hand what you counted and carefully saved all this must go so you know how does it the landscape can be between the regions of kindness how you ride and ride thinking the bus will never stop the passengers eating maze in check and will stare out the window forever before you learn the tender gravity of kindness you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road you must see how this could be you how he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive before you know kindness is the deepest thing inside you must know sorrow is the other deepest thing you must wake up with sorrow you must speak to it to your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread . Only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say it is I who have been looking for and then goes with you everywhere like a shadow or a friend. One thing I have I've tried to say to groups over the years groups of all ages is that you know writing things down whatever you're writing down even if you're writing something sad or hard up usually you feel better after you do it somehow you're given a sense of Ok this this mood this sorrow and feeling this trouble I'm in I've given it shape it's got a shape on the page now so I can stand back I can look at it I can think about it a little differently what do I do now very rarely do you hear anyone say they write things down and feel worse they always say I wrote things down you know this isn't quite finished I need to work on it but they agree that it helped them sort of see their experience see what they were living and that's definitely a gift of writing that is above and beyond you know in a sort of folk a tional you know how much somebody publishes it's an act that helps you preserve you energizes you in the very doing of it and actually I interviewed Mary Oliver last year and she said and by the way she also described the pun wild geese not as a voice coming to her but basically as something that was just given she said I had there maybe 2 or 3 but that one she wasn't even you know doing but before and that poem is so important like mine is it's on that's life it's upon it's love that becomes like it is. Right yeah it is and that that she always carries a notebook right I mean that's one of her trademarks and she said to me you know if you if you don't have a notebook you know you don't get it again you have to write things down as a kindness right and so I said really airing a notebook again after 20 years I think that's great then and you can carry with it any age you're never too old to start caring you know but yeah last week I was in a classroom in Austin Texas where a girl. Who was apparently going through a really rough spell at home wrote a poem that was definitely tragic and comic book about kind of everybody was yelling at her in the poem like from all directions she was just kind of suffering in her home place and trying to find peace trying to find a place to do her homework but she wrote this in such a compelling way that when she read it and read it with gusto and in joy there was such joyousness in her voice even though she was describing something that sounded awful when she finished the girls in her classroom just broke into wild applause and I was sorry face she lit up and she said and I feel better and I thought yeah that's this is such a a graphic example of putting words on the page that feeling of being connected to someone else when you allow yourself to be very particular is another mystery of writing. I'm Krista Tippett and this is On Being today I'm with the poet Naomi she had 9. Is looking at me this book poems for girls which actually echoes what you just. Hear me say if you have many voices and let them speak to one another in a friendly fashion if you're not too proud to talk to yourself out loud if you ask the questions pressing against your forehead from the inside you'll be Ok if you write 3 lines down in a notebook every day and then in print seize they don't have to be great or important they don't have to relate to one another you don't have to sew them to anyone. You will find out what you notice uncanny connections will be made visible to you that's what I started learning when I was 12 and I never stopped learning it . And you know I think many people are encouraged to think you could write that little and still gained something from it you know that you don't have to be spending an hour and a half to 3 hours to 5 hours a day writing to have a meaningful experience with it it's a very immediate experience you can sit down to write 3 sentences how long does that take 3 minutes 5 minutes and be giving yourself a very rare gift of listening to yourself you know just finding out when you go back and look at what you wrote and how many times we think oh I would never have remembered that if I hadn't written an answer when and how did that even occur to me I sort of like it this week and it could help me and now are you know I want to connect is something else. Everybody finds that out and you know just to encourage others to do it without a big massive goal in front of them at all times you've said that you you read your son to sleep and you also have met him awake I did you know what would you do you go in and sit by his bed well when you know when he was around 13 he said Mommy don't have to read to me anymore I can read for myself and I said Yeah I know all your all the other parents I know stop when their kids are like 80 or not I have I'm still reading to you but he was sweet and gracious about it and we did like that reading time at bedtime and so I paused for a while maybe a year I wasn't reading to him and and then this farmer showed up in Oklahoma in a workshop and told us all that he had come just to listen he just wanted to hear everyone read their work and we thought wow look at this the wandering audience he doesn't even want to participate it just wants to listen and he said No sitting is participation it's very important and he talked about being a child and being awakened every day by his grand it who read to the kids in the house. As a wake up call every morning in the resident hallway outside their bedrooms and read poems and might bring clicked I thought this is what I'll do the rest of the tire site is a home I'll wake him every day read Meg poems so we did that for years and I think he really liked it there are people I read a lot were people like Robert Bly Lucille Clifton Frank O'Hara for some reason Chinese poems Japanese poems and we would occasionally talk about the poems later in the day he'd bring something up about one of the poems I'd read and you know but I never did it so that we could have a particular conversation I just did it because you know all parents have a moment in the day when you need to get your kid up if they haven't gotten up already and was kids like to loiter in the bed there so it was a pleasure to me to hear poems. In the air 1st thing in the morning be saying them to you know our beloved sauted hopefully he'll do that to his son who turns one month old tomorrow wow and I like that too because it's much is my my my kids are also great big now but isn't any kind of lovely memories of the have of reading at the end of the day you're such tired at the end of the day it's a nice idea to think of reading and poetry starting the day when you're fresh air when you take it with you it's beautiful it feels beautiful you feel better you the reader feel better there also so many other places where this could be appropriate . A middle school principal some years ago and he said to me Oh I've always loved poetry but I can't really use it cause I'm just the principal I said What are you talking about you know where is the inner calm in your school he said it's in my office Is it Ok well you have announcements yes everywhere Dick why don't you read a poem to start off the day for the entire school and you know like I sort of forgot about this encounter with him in a couple years later I went to that school and I thought wow I don't know what's going on in this school I'd forgotten that that's where he was but these kids love poetry and finally one of them said to me well the announcements every day are principal results appalled and so we you know we carry poems of us every day we have them in our heads and one thing interesting was he seemed to have needed a little push since he didn't see himself as a poet that it would be Ok for him to read a Paul or I know it and also he needed a little push that he didn't have to read the whole poem like if you wanted to read just a stanza from Ralph Waldo Emerson or just you know here's a stanza from Walt Whitman that was Ok you didn't have to read the entire poem if you didn't have time he liked that but I think he just needed the encouragement. You know before we draw too close and also hear some more of your poems I want to touch a little bit on your father again just on this man. Her of refugees which is so resonant now in the world that is new just desperate way and you know there's something in me that feels like we're kind of it's happening specially here in America it's happening over there kind of but I wonder if when people look back a 100 years from now if we're still around if the this won't be the thing that was changing the world that's going to shape the rest of the century but 1st of all there's that opening page of transfer where you feel kind of dedicating the book to your father but you the passage that starts refugee not all with. Yes refugee not always once a confident school boy strolling Jerusalem streets he knew the alleyways spoke to stone all his life he would pick up stones and pocket the on some he drew faces what do we say in the wake of one who was always homesick are you home now is Palestine peaceful in some dimension we can't see did use and Arabs share the table is holy in the middle. You know and I think many times the way immigrants with people look at immigrants with such a a sense of diminishment as in this person is less than I am because they've left their country well I actually think they're more than we are because they're brave or they've gone some other place they have to operate in another language how easy would that be you know if I had to go to China today and start living in China then doing everything in Chinese would be very very hard so you think about the bravery of these people and and the desperation with which they're trying to to find a realm of safety for their families and and are just the basic safety that we take for granted every day we get up and I don't know I don't know how how a world with so many resources and so many religious traditions and good hopes how we can keep doing these things to one another in the world that create refugee populations I mean it just seems outrageous Why is that happening so much Yeah and I think that's another one of those questions we have to sit with young man to eat I mean here is just some lines from another the history poem and that that transfer we were born to wander to grieve lost Linea and what we did to one another on a planet so wide open for doing. So wide open so much we could do always. So many surprising moves a person a country could make that might be imaginative that my you know encourage. Positive behavior instead of negative yeah yeah and I don't know maybe the magnitude of this moment forces us to rise to the occasion human beings do that every once in a while to you I hope so I hope so and I hope you know that. That was serious rising to one's better self which was a concept that really perplexed me as a child my mother would say especially if I'd been in some kind of mischief at school which occasionally happened because I wasn't always focused on Jack and. Liz be boring and Jane Jane Yeah the boring Jr was trying to get away from there all that and so I would get in a little trouble and. And my mother would say to me you know her charge to me be your best self and I would think wow what is that self where is it where is it tucked away where do I keep it when I'm not being it are you your best self is my teacher her best self and you know that was just something intriguing to me that we had more than one self that we could operate out of and I think one nice thing about writing is that you get to encounter you to meet these other selves which continue on in you your child self your older self your confused self your self that makes a lot of mistakes you know and find some gracious way to have a community and there inside that would. Would help you survive. Poetry is conversation that's right writing is a way of having conversation between the different selves inside you yes that's nice I think so and that's a big thing I mean that's not to be underestimated that it's important to do that. You know you write about so many places you go and that the word gravity is important to you and I think that it's just seems to me it's a big word for you and it seems to me it's often related to a sense of place I mean I don't think it's always just about place but how would you put it mean in your Mendelssohn you know what father felt like a wonder like he was always you know wandering around in a knife always felt like a wonder or that and that we have so many places we could explore and learn about. But I think you can feel all kinds of gravity you know wherever you are every day in different ways and often through human contact you find your best gravity a conversation with someone just a simple simple exchange of words can give you a sense of gravity. I've always loved the the definition for contemplation along with loving look in when you take a long loving look anywhere you feel sort of more bonded with whatever you've looked at me feel as if you know you recognize it you see it maybe it sees you back in and you're participating in a world where it exists and so feeling that sense of gravity and belonging everywhere is very important to me it's what you do I think you claim I am a kind of global passport I guess it might be and this young woman in Kuwait this morning on the Skype class I did she was saying that she was Palestinian had never been to Palestine born in Jordan had never seen Jordan was taken to Kuwait as a baby and raised in quaint now she was a college senior and she said and I don't belong to any of these places and I feel so like a drift and I'm not accepted in any of these places and I said you know my hope for you with that would be that you could find a way to live a way to be a voice seen use where you feel at home in all of them and I think there is a way to do that you know as readers and writers we find a certain home in books and language and literature like I hear a merry all of her poem and it's as if I've been her neighbor because I've read so many of her talk yeah even though I've never spent a day in her town maybe one day sometime but so we abide with one another we find through images ways to be together so if my hope for that girl was not that she would feel you know alienated forever from all her places but that she could find a way to be so much herself and let those parts of herself continue the dialogue through writing or through whatever she chooses to do but I do think writing would really help in her case would help her you know to feel an identity. So so you are your refugee or Palestinian refugee father you know you you say in this concert over and over again but as you wrote about him after he died you know he loved the world the world frustrated him endlessly but he loved it and he hoped for it yeah you know there's this beautiful line he never gave up hope everything depended on me to respect the sadness of my father was a land mass under water I want to ask you about the substance of hope for you. Thank you for for asking that you know right now living in Texas it's boring and everything is bursting forth I mean things we had even forgotten we planted things we don't remember the derivation of that come from all these things are popping up and bursting open and the air smells very sweet with this wonderful tree we have down here called Mountain Laurel and there's kind of it it talks a catering feeling of of spring opens up like that all these flowers open their faces to the sky and and then we have the amazing fields and fields and miles and miles of wild flowers in Texas and just that that sense of return restoration. Energy coming back out of the soil and so I think you know the the gift of daily life which is our treasure as long as we live hopefully there are days with all their simple tasks and errands to be fulfilled but also moments of apprehension that are greater than those tasks and errands or moments of apprehension they come through those tasks and. You know people used to ask me a lot when I was younger Why do you write about common things normal like regular little things and I said well what do you have in your life I mean I'm not living like in Star Trek I have called them things about life. What else do I have but I don't think that the things are themselves Khalid you know I think I think it's a miracle that the anything works you know I still. How little thinking about Flint Michigan a lot these days I think I think about the miracle of plumbing a watt and the and the all the mysteries we don't see under the soil the pipes the wires the wireless connections now let me just thinking about everything that's going on kind of like when you're a child fascinated by old stuff that's going on inside your body and you didn't have to tell it to do that but I used to think my stomach is mine I'm digesting right now I didn't have to tell it to do that I just did it that's incredible or the heart beating or the blood rolling through the veins and you think wow you know all this stuff goes on that's not commonplace to me that's miraculous It's amazing and. So writing is a way that we're continually continuously restored to that in reading other people's work being restored to that how could you ever feel too old or to door in a world like that. Naomi she had nice books including 1000 varieties of Gazelle you and yours the words under the words and amaze me poems for girls Her newest book is voices in the air poems for listeners. And on being dot org You can listen again it read and download all the poems and me she had 9 recited this hour as well as many others with stories attached. Cross that line is an important poem to me because I loved Paul Robeson so much as a child I loved his voice we have a record of him singing and you know I wouldn't read his biography till I was an adult and know about or he suffered as a so-called communist and how his passport was taken away from him and he was not allowed to leave the nation though he had a huge fan club in Europe and elsewhere so I thought this was so funny when he did this and I now own a cd of this concert really yeah someone sent it to me it is some archival recording pretty amazing cross that line Paul Robeson stood on the northern border of the USA and saying into Canada where a vast audience sat on folding chairs waiting to hear him he saying into Canada his voice left the USA when his body was not allowed to cross that line. Remind us again brave friend what countries may we sing into what lines should we all be crossing. What songs travel toward us from far away to deepen our day. On being is Chris Hugo Billie Percy Mariah Helgeson Maya Tarot. Malkuth and of us see Aaron Ferrel at all Tony for Tina Davis Bethany Iverson Erin Kristen lamb and Jeffrey. Our lovely theme music is provided and composed by Zoe Keating and the last voice you hear singing our final credits in each show is hip hop artist. On being was created at American Public Media a funding partners include the Fetzer Institute helping to build the spiritual foundation for a loving world find them Efexor dot org Callia pay a foundation working to create a future where universal spiritual values form the foundation of how we care for our common home Humanity United advancing human dignity at home and around the world find out more at humanity United dot org part of the group the Henry Luce foundation in support of public theology reimagined the Osprey Foundation a catalyst for empowered healthy and fulfilled lives and the Lilly Endowment an Indianapolis based private family foundation dedicated to its founders interest in religion community development and education. Being its debate it. Public Radio Exchange and does it Krista Tippett public production. This is audiogram the Bay Area sonic signature each week will play you a sound recorded somewhere in the Bay Area. Ready he would go. For lunch and the morning her so as Barbara old school. Of thought that was over a door or a number game she really did solos while her love all over the Call it was easy to follow it like it's our job oh my God how how. Did you know what that was called 415-264-7106 tell us that's 41526471 has 6 We'll tell you the story behind the sound this Thursday on cross currents so you need. To. Shut. Good morning it's just before 8 o'clock here on 91.7 k l w where Hidden Brain Shankar Vedantam is next followed by 2 hours of to the best of our knowledge then at 11 it's philosophy talk all part of our Sunday morning ideas line up here on Calle w. San Francisco. I'm Shankar Vedantam and from n.p.r. This is Hidden Brain. More than a decade ago N.P.R.'s social science correspondent Shankar Vedantam gun looking into the unseen influences that shape our lives psychologists even have a term for this behavior just racialized just might also be playing nice and sing days is what I found astonished me not a lot of people know that this is I fell off my chair when I saw this was one of those things that the world was never suppose.
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