Favorite Living Poet

April is Poetry Month and I have been too busy with school and the kids' stuff to do much of anything about it. In honor of it before it is over, though, let's talk about our favorite living poets.

My favorite living poet is Naomi Shihab Nye, a fellow Texan - at least, she has lived in Texas since I have known of her. I love her poetry about family and the Middle East, about Texas and just about herself. I first read her poetry when I was in a summer enrichment creative writing class the summer before high school began for me. Our teacher was a Dallas poet and he used Naomi Shihab Nye's Little Brother Poem as a form to get us to write sibling poems. We were all bawling our eyes out as we read our sibling poems - sensitive bunch. Later, the high school I went to in Dallas, Arts Magnet, held a writers' conference each year, and she came to read her poetry to us and hold workshops. I actually got to be in a workshop she taught and she told me she liked one my poems - beam!

Naomi Shihab Nye wrote some children's fiction later, which I read once I became a mother. Her husband's photography exhibit was once on display in our city as part of an amazing exhibit on teen pregnancy. When my MIL realized I was a fan, she told me that she had been part of a group at the University of North Texas that had sponsored a reading from Naomi Shihab Nye and had published a chapbook of the poetry from the reading. She brought me one of the chapbooks, autographed in a silver ink.

When Marigold was a baby, I submitted some poetry to Naomi Shihab Nye, who is the poetry editor for the Texas Observer. She didn't take it, but she was very encouraging - I will try again.

Who is your favorite living poet?