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Fuel, by Naomi Shihab Nye. BOA Editions, Ltd, 1998.

As a talented poet, Naomi Shihab Nye has the usual gifts: the special perception in her attention to detail, the making of apt metaphors, the deep images which resonate beyond conscious thought. An airplane passenger gives her a girl baby to hold; "She wore a tiny white dress / leafed with layers / like a wedding cake." A poet reads in a language she doesn’t understand, and stops "so abruptly, / I fall into the breath / of the person next to me."

These talents are wonderful, but they’re the powers of someone with a superior eye and tongue. What I like most about Nye is her mind. More than a sayer, she is a soothsayer, with a wisdom revealed often enough to make Fuel a wonderful collection. As with most collections, Fuel is too long, and sometimes quite ordinary. This tendency to get watered down by saying too much comes with the age we live in, but doesn’t become a sage. Her really good poems make up for the forgettable ones, but I would rather see a more concentrated volume, topographically, or thematically. Generally these poems bring to life the conflict between words and action, where only the wind is "the one complete sentence," and the rest of us live like sleepers pressing our ear to the ground for the knowledge of what to do and how to do it. Nye is always listening like that. In one of her most famous poems, "The Man Who Makes Brooms," from her 1986 book Yellow Glove, she is chided by others to "speak for my people." Instead, she finds a man who makes brooms and says nothing at all.

When a poet means to tell me how to live and see the world, they’d better have some wisdom to offer, like Rumi or Rilke or Robert Bly. Nye is more subtle. She is courteous, even ladylike, but equally bold in thought. Fuel opens with "Muchas Gracias Por Todo."

MUCHAS GRACIAS POR TODO

This plane has landed thanks to God and his mercy.
That’s what they say in Jordan when the plane sets down.

What do they say in our country? Don’t stand up till we tell you.
Stay in your seats. Things may have shifted.

This river has not disappeared thanks to that one big storm
when the water was almost finished.

We used to say thanks to the springs
but the springs dried up so we changed it.

This rumor tells no truth thanks to people.
This river walk used to be better when no one came.

What about the grapes? Thanks to the grapes
we have more than one story to tell.

Thanks to a soft place in the middle of the evening.
Thanks to three secret hours before dawn.

These deer are seldom seen because of their shyness.
If you see one you count yourselves among the lucky on the earth.

Your eyes get quieter.
These deer have nothing to say to us.

Thanks to the fan, we are still breathing.
Thanks to the small toad that lives in cool mud at the base of the zinnias.

And in "Fundamentalism," Nye puts her judgments in the form of a question set. Gentle enough on the face of it, but underneath it is a political interrogation of the accused.

FUNDAMENTALISM

Because the eye has a short shadow or
it is hard to see over heads in the crowd?

If everyone else seems smarter
but you need your own secret?

If mystery was never your friend?

If one way could satisfy
the infinite heart of the heavens?

If you liked the king on his golden throne
more than the villagers carrying baskets of lemons?

If you wanted to be sure
his guards would admit you to the party?

        The boy with the broken pencil
        scrapes his little knife against the lead
        turning and turning it as a point
        emerges from the wood again

If he would believe his life is like that
he would not follow his father into war

When I see that conditional construction, I think of Rumi’s "Elephant In The Dark." "The palm and the fingers feeling in the dark are / how the senses explore the reality of the elephant. / If each of us held a candle there, / and if we went in together, / we could see it." It’s like Rilke’s "The Man Watching." "If only we would let ourselves be dominated / as things do by some immense storm, / we would become strong too, / and not need names." Which is a translation by Robert Bly, who writes ironically in "Counting Small-Boned Bodies," "If we could only make the bodies smaller, / The size of skulls, / We could make a whole plain white with skulls in the moonlight!" It’s like Nye’s "French Movies, from Yellow Glove:" "If we aren’t fragile, we don’t deserve the world."

I like that theoretical voice, which has a special power of truth behind it, and I love all the other ways Nye finds of showing these truths–shyly or apologetically at times, as if it would be impolite to be more declarative, let alone imperative, as Rumi is in his "The Fragile Vial," where he says, "Be a spot of ground where nothing is growing, / where something might be planted, / a seed, possibly, from the Absolute."

Instead, Nye often puts her revelations into the mouths of others, or even the mind of a babe, as in "Wedding Cake."

WEDDING CAKE

Once on a plane
a woman asked me to hold her baby
and disappeared.
I figured it was safe,
our being on a plane and all.
How far could she go?

She returned one hour later,
having changed her clothes
and washed her hair.
I didn’t recognize her.

By this time the baby
and I had examined
each other’s necks.
We had cried a little.

I had a silver bracelet
and a watch.
Gold studs glittered
in the baby’s ears.
She wore a tiny white dress
leafed with layers
like a wedding cake.

I did not want
to give her back.

The baby’s curls coiled tightly
against her scalp,
another alphabet.
I read new new new.
My mother gets tired.
I’ll chew your hand.
The baby left my skirt crumpled,
my lap aching.
Now I’m her secret guardian,
the little nub of dream
that rises slightly
but won’t come clear.

As she grows,
as she feels ill at ease,
I’ll bob my knee.

What will she forget?
Whom will she marry?
He’d better check with me.
I’ll say once she flew
dressed like a cake
between two doilies of cloud.
She could slip the card into a pocket,
pull it out.
Already she knew the small finger
was funnier than the whole arm.

There is much more–and less–to look for in Fuel. No one captures the mind of a young boy any better than Nye, writing (presumably) about her son. The titles alone tell you of the fun she has, while weaving her lessons of life: "Boy’s Sleep," "So There," "Our Son Swears He Has 102 Gallons of Water in His Body," and my favorite, "How Far Is It to the Land We Left?" Poets can’t do everything, and there are also things not to look for in Nye’s work, such as music and flow. Some lines fall to the page as flatly as: "I did not want / to give her back." Even at her most lyrical, Nye will intersperse plain and flowing lines as if by accident. The opening of "Wind and the Sleeping Breath of Men" is the perfect example:

From faraway
from the faraway inside each life
the island a minor disruption

and so on. It turns out to be a nice poem, but that third line is a clanker. So sometimes Nye is more of a sayer/narrator than a singer/wordsmith. So her poetry is plenty beautiful, and Fuel worth having. So far, I have to say I’m a big fan of BOA books.

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