Red Suitcase

By Naomi Shihab Nye

Book Overview

Poet, teacher, essayist, anthologist, songwriter and singer, Naomi Shihab Nye is one of the country's most acclaimed writers. Her voice is generous; her vision true; her subjects ordinary people, and ordinary situations which, when rendered through her language, become remarkable. In this, her fourth full collection of poetry, we see with new eyes-a grandmother's scarf, an alarm clock, a man carrying his son on his shoulders.

Valentine for Ernest Mann

You can't order a poem like you order a taco.
Walk up to the counter and say, "I'll take two"
and expect it to handed back to you
on a shiny plate.

Still, I like you spirit.
Anyone who says, "Here's my address,
write me a poem," deserves something in reply.
So I'll tell a secret instead:
poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes,
they are sleeping. They are the shadows
drifting across our ceilings the moment
before we wake up. What we have to do
is live in a way that lets us find them.

Once I knew a man who gave his wife
two skunks for a valentine.
He couldn't understand why she was crying.
"I thought they had such beautiful eyes."
And he was serious. He was a serious man
who lived in a serious way. Nothing was ugly
just because the world said so. He really
liked those skunks. So, he re-invented them
as valentines and they became beautiful.
At least, to him. And the poems that had been hiding
in the eyes of skunks for centuries
crawled out and curled up at his feet.

Maybe if we re-invent whatever our lives give us
we find poems. Check your garage, the odd sock
in your drawer, the person you almost like, but not quite.
And let me know.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1880238152
• ISBN13: 9781880238158
• Release Date: November 1994
• Publisher: BOA Editions
• Length: 90 Pages
• Weight: 0.42 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

a great storyteller and painter of picturess

Nye is amazing, both in person and in her books. She is kind and quiet and elogent and haunting with her words. Her poem, Next Time, is my favorite. It's simple and short and one of those poems that is much bigger than it's words. I find it repeating in my head from time to time. Nye is gifted and generous and should be appluaded greatly for her work.

Greatest contemporary American literature ...

I got this book from a penpal with a personal dedication of Naomi Shihab Nye herself. My friend wrote me, that the author was quite excited, that a guy from Germany will read her poetry. Well, the guy from Germany did read it for several times now and this book becomes better and better the more you read it. I hoped to meet Naomi Nye at Madhatter's Tea House in her home town San Antonio, Texas in October 1996. Unfortunately I didn't meet her there, so now I hope, she'll read these words of Kai from Germany!