How a Poet Praised for Her Optimism Handles Despair

Naomi Shihab Nye is a poet, a Palestinian American, and a devoted optimist living through what she calls mysterious times. Though the recent reelection of former President Donald Trump and the grinding war in Gaza has her feeling "despondent," she also has cause for gratitude. Nye is the 2024 winner of the Texas Writer Award , which will be presented to her at the Texas Book Festival this weekend in downtown Austin. That honor comes on the heels of her receiving the prestigious Wallace Stevens Award , a lifetime achievement honor from the Academy of American Poets.

And then there's being a proud Texan. "I always felt very, very lucky to be in a state where you could go anywhere and encourage voice and encourage listening to one another's voices and feel at home doing it," she says of her work with children and educators throughout Texas.

Born in St. Louis, Nye spent her early years in Jerusalem until the Six-Day War in 1967 sent her family fleeing back to the United States. They settled in San Antonio, where the 72-year-old Nye still lives. She found poetry as a teenager and has used her gift for language to describe life in Texas and in Palestine and to find beauty and joy in even the bleakest of times. "My whole life has been about listening and paying attention to the people around me, sharing voices, and as an educator, encouraging other people to use their voices," she told me during a recent phone conversation.

While many Texans were celebrating Trump's victory, I called Nye the morning after Election Day, when optimism for her—and for others who'd hoped for a different result—felt especially distant. We spoke about her recent honors, about defending Texas from its (often ignorant) critics, and finding meaning in this moment of history.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

TM: Maybe we start on a happy note. Congratulations on winning two big awards. How do you feel?

NSN: They were both a big shock, and one never feels deserving. It's even a little hard to accept. A Palestinian friend of mine also had something good happen to her recently, and she feels the same way. We're all so humbled by what's happening in Gaza. The fact that a genocide can happen in front of our faces, that everybody sees it, so many people protest against it, and still to not be heard by governments. . . . How can we celebrate ourselves when we're feeling so despondent? But I'm very touched, and you need to feel very grateful when people are so nice to you, and you're surprised that they even know you exist.

TM: Poets don't seem to have as strong a grasp on the popular imagination as they once did.

NSN: I hear that a lot, but I still see people reaching out and calling for poetry, whether in times of great sorrow or buoyancy, especially in times of transition like weddings and funerals. And I've noticed over the years that when politicians quote poems, that's often something that gets quoted and requoted later. So I think people have an aptitude and a need for poetry that's just as essential and deep as it ever was. When I look at what people transmit on Facebook or Instagram, which are the only two social media platforms I use, it seems like poems get passed around a whole lot and read and copied a whole lot. It seems to me like poetry has just gone into another phase of its existence.

TM: And yet many writers right now seem unable to make sense of the current moment.

NSN: We need language to witness what we're going through. I am a person who believes we often don't see things clearly until it's written down. Someone else writes it or we write it. And then suddenly we see, yeah, that's what I'm feeling. I think we're living in a time that's very mysterious. I mean, to me, this day after this result in the election is so mysterious. I cannot fathom half my country's preference.

TM: "Mysterious" is a great word for these times. The power of language to describe a shared reality seems to be faltering.

NSN: Language is our tool. It's the way that we encounter one another, the way that we transmit our thoughts and our memories. In this day and age, we have so much of it around, and I'm intrigued by how much we are able to take in. I wonder if our minds have increased their capacity for taking in so many opinions and so much information. What do we do with it? What stands out to us? You know, I've always felt poetry was clarifying, like a filter of language. Poetry is not like a big op-ed essay, although these days, there are some people writing poems like that. I've always felt that we need a sieve for the information we hold.

TM: Throughout your poetry, there's an unrelenting strain of optimism.

NSN: You're right. It existed until last night.

TM: I was about to enlist your optimism into the service of giving a lift to any of our readers who might be feeling that same despondency.

NSN: I've had a really hard time with that since Gaza. I believe what's happening there is a genocide. It has been graphically broadcast, and yet the United States keeps sending weapons. That feeling has disheartened me and others so dramatically over the past year that I have had to really look around and say, you know, what is keeping me going here? How can I maintain a strain of optimism? I've found that reading poets from Gaza communicating with people in Gaza or who are from there has been extremely helpful. I think of the Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha, who has been communicating with me since he was a teenager and is now in his thirties. He has become a spokesperson for the people of Gaza. He's in the United States now and just released his second book, Forest of Noise. I think about somebody like Mosab, who has lost something like thirty-three members of his family, and his wife has lost something like twenty-two members of her family. And he is speaking out. He is dumbfounded by the cruelty of it all. But he's still able to speak of humanity, talk about daily life, and talk about what makes us human, what gives us bearing in our lives. And that's what's always interested me in poetry. How does a poem help us live a day? It helps us live our daily lives.

TM: When did you begin thinking of poetry in that way?

NSN: Since I was in high school, when my parents moved to San Antonio. It was a chaotic period in my life. I'd been in three high schools, two were in Jerusalem. We fled the Six-Day War, and it seemed like a really random choice by my parents to move to Texas, but it turned out to be such a good choice because Texas is so welcoming. And I think my father, as an Arab American, was very comfortable to move to a predominantly Mexican American city. That made him feel at home. There was this feeling of solidarity that my parents felt with Texas from the beginning. They always felt welcomed.

TM: Do you still feel that way being in Texas?

NSN: I've always felt that. I feel like I know the state better than many people who were born here, in part because of my work through the Texas Commission on the Arts as a visiting writer in schools all over Texas. I got to know communities, including very small, rural ones that many native Texans have never heard of. I think of places like Comanche, De Leon, Comstock, Kingsville, and Albany. I got to know them through the kids and the schools and the teachers and the families who were there. I wasn't just like driving through as a tourist. I was there listening to their voices, encouraging them to write their stories. All these places became really a part of my psyche as a Texan. . . . I've never been in a community where I thought, "God, I can't wait to get out of here." Not once.

TM: I feel the same way. I've never lived in a friendlier and more welcoming place, which some of my relatives in the Midwest, where I'm from, have a hard time believing, especially when they see Texas elect politicians they consider mean-spirited.

NSN: When people in other states say something like, "God, how do you live in Texas?" I always come to Texas's defense. I'll ask people who say something like that if they've ever visited the state, and very often, they'll admit they never have and don't know anyone here. Then I'll say, well, that's the thing, we have wonderful people. We have all kinds of people and cultures. And some cannot imagine that about Texas, which is crazy to me. I feel like there's so much goodness and openness here. The physicality of the place, its vastness imbues a sense of imagination and room for variant ideas and opinions. But there are things I still don't understand. I always found people in rural parts of Texas to be very authentic. It's mysterious to me how these authentic people could vote for politicians who, to me, seem inauthentic in so many ways. It's baffling to me. I have heard people say, well, it's fear, it's religion, it's the border. I don't know. It still doesn't make sense to me.

TM: Maybe all that's left is to ask questions.

NSN: And that is my favorite function of poetry. You don't just write down the things you're sure about. You ask, how did it come to be this way? Some of the most popular poets do just that, such as Mary Oliver in her beloved poem " The Summer Day ," which has been quoted a billion times: "What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" Great poems call us to attention. What are we living? Where are we? Does it matter? I think we're going to need poems more than ever because poems humanize us and they slow us down.

TM: How has living in Texas, and especially in San Antonio's bilingual atmosphere, shaped you as a writer? What did you learn from listening to and observing the community there?

NSN: I live near downtown in San Antonio, near the River Walk. And when I hear people speaking in their yards or to one another, I pay attention to the musicality, the kind of English/Spanish mixture, which I often heard my father use with English and Arabic when he spoke with his brothers. That sense of cultural blending is beautiful. I feel that coming here to Texas really made me contemplate my Arab Americanness in a whole new way. To see that your own life is this cultural tapestry of things woven together, that it's not just one thing, was very encouraged.

TM: You studied religion at Trinity University, in San Antonio. Were there any religious texts that influenced your imagination or your writing?

NSN: I studied the Bible, but I was also very attracted to the language of the Quran and the Bhagavad Gita, the Dhammapada, and old Buddhist stories. I would say these days, the Zen Buddhism texts are probably closest to my heart.

TM: Is there anything you're leaning on right now at this moment of feeling despondent?

NSN: One thing I think poetry has often called us to do is really focus on what we care about. What do you see right now, and how does this feel to you? For people who are feeling this despondency, you know, just to ask, what has kept you going in other hard times in your life, in times when things didn't go the way you wanted them to go? Is there a line, a stanza, a chorus? Is there a word that has been a rudder for you? What keeps you steady on your path?

A lot of creative people are going to feel distraught. The atmosphere is darker and creepier. All this stuff about America being a failed country and all this stuff, that's such a downer. I don't know any creative people who want to walk around holding that close to their heart.

TM: Although sometimes that darkness can inspire amazing works.