Good evening and welcome. So tonight, Zen and Poetry. It's an interesting endeavor to live in a world that has both thoughtless moments of experience and thoughtful moments of reflection. You know, immersion in the silence of the moment and then coming forth in the expression of language Zen and poetry. They need each other. They complement each other. They discover each other. They celebrate each other. You know, sometimes we might say the roots in Zen in the earth and the branches in the sky in the poetry and then sometimes we might reverse it I just read a poem that said in the roots of the great tree in the heavens and the branches opening into the earth so it is my delight my honor my good luck to be able to introduce to you Naomi Shihabnai the winner of

[01:26]

the author of many, many books, all of which you should read, every single one. Every one of them is a job. The small snippets that you'll have time to read this evening, we will let you know. Naomi has this remarkable gift of an apparent innocence you know, but that innocence has an authority, you know, it makes clear what's important, you know, not through some chilled out, you know, piece of wisdom, but something joyous that's innate, you know, its authority just becomes self-evident in the deep appreciation with which it's expressed.

[02:28]

So it's my delight to introduce Naomi. Thank you, Paul. Such an honor to be here with you all. Thank you for coming this evening and to come. And thank you for that immensely generous and warm introduction, Paul. welcomed me at Zen Center Wednesday night, and I think I've had the two kindest welcomes of my life, what, three days, two days apart. Thank you so much. To come to Tassajara once, if you're a poet who's heard about it for more than 35 years, is a great pleasure and treasure. To come four times is even better, so I feel very lucky to come back and to be in the poetry circle in the yurt and elsewhere with Paul Haller. the greatest pleasure, joy I can even imagine. So thank you all for sharing a little time with us, and thanks all of you who've come.

[03:30]

Is the sound okay? No? It's not? Okay. Not good? Is it better if I hold it? No, no. If you just move it up and clip it about there, it'll be fine. Okay, try it again. Thanks for coming in here, and thanks those of you who came to the Poetry Gathering. Is it better now? Yes. We're wandering here and we're mulling and pondering and some people writing brand new things and some people going to things they might have started. And I thought I would like to read something that I started quite a while ago and maybe a few months ago and did another draft of working on it today. I love the E.B. White quote. All I was ever trying to say was that I love the world. And for those of us who loved E.B.

[04:35]

White's books for children, or his essays for adults, or his letters, I love his letters. I think that's a very nice quote to remember. But we've talked about teachers and sometimes the guidance we get early on, so this is something I have I'm still working on, advice from beloved poets in three little sections. Number one, writing a bad poem before breakfast every day, said Robert, is a good habit. He did it in honor of his friend Bill, did it for pleasure, for prod, to get the head in gear. Does it even now, today, somewhere in the northern reaches, with that welcoming tone which says, we're all in this together, and it's still foggy and precious, odd angles coming clearer.

[05:41]

Not one poem is bad, by the way. They're all great, too. you should really said William get your son a dog otherwise how will he grow up without a dog's eyes to look into that zone of deep he has a cat's eyes I said the eyes of a turtle and turtles are smarter than you thought also when he was young The chickens followed him as if he were their prophet. What else does a boy need? Three. Say, I can't, without a reason, said Bill, a month before he died, without warning. If you give a reason, they'll have a handle.

[06:44]

Way to talk you into it. But no, just can't. Simply can't. At this point in all our histories, the little engine that could stopped on the tracks. So, and this is called Please. Also worked on today. Sometimes I say no to no one, says the blonde girl clutching her brother's stroller on a Princeton street. A sweet morning, plush with green. I lined up for coffee and oats, spoke too brightly to strangers who didn't reply. So it's nice to hear such a clear bell of a line lighting the air by the sleeping bookshop

[07:45]

the fancy faucet store more time with that girl would suit me now sometimes I say yes to everyone how can it be a corner kiosk for magazines greets us so tenderly a bench cries for its lost man sounds not good But how are the poems? Okay, why don't I hold it out here? Is this better? Is it okay if I read two poems by wonderful poets who died this year? Yes. Lucille Clifton, blessing the boats. May the tide... that is entering even now the lip of our understanding carry you out beyond the face of fear may you kiss the wind then turn from it certain that it will love your back may you open your eyes to water water waving forever and may you in your innocence sail through this to that Lucille

[09:12]

And from Jack Myers. Did anyone know the poems of Jack Myers? He was a marvelous poet who lived in Dallas and was originally from Boston. He made a strong mark on generations of writing students at SMU. A very funny guy. Cirrus. I'd like to leave a lighter imprint on the world than I'd formerly thought. than I'd formerly meant. Just a scent, not the thud of the thing steaming on a plate. Instead of, I told you so, let my epitaph be the glance, the edge, the mist, the delicately attenuated swirl of an innuendo instead of a thunderhead. The rain that fell when I was ambitious, seemed conspiringly rushed in my way.

[10:14]

But the same rain today tastes of here and now because of where it's been. I'd like to be gentle with small great things. They are larger than what we think we came here for. I'd like to be an eye of light that opens the air. and burns beyond ambition, like the sun that can't see us and is beyond our reach, yet is in us a trillion times over. Jack Myers, M-Y-E-R-S. Aziz, my father, who was always my father, not always, my father. Refugee, not always. Once a confident schoolboy, strolling slow Jerusalem streets.

[11:19]

He knew the alleyways, spoke to stones, all his life picked up stones, pocketed them, lined them in his sunny Texas windowsill. 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? Do Jews and Arabs share the table? Is holy in the middle? Swerve. The dog Rosie, who comes home after nine days with something darker in her eyes, will not be able to say exactly where she went and what she saw.

[12:24]

But the summer shifts into another key for all who searched for her. Now we know how many mournful dogs sprawl in dirt on streets called riddle and labor. on the back curve by the ancient brewery. How many empty houses, wreckages, broken shelves, cushionless sofas, lonely tracks and the stunning folds of fat on two shirtless brothers who sat on the tail of their truck watching blankly as we circled their block. How many bony cats smashed bottles and the man in a white apron who burst forth as I coaxed his dog to take a closer look at it. Does he keep it near him in the kitchen now under the swirling fan thinking I have my eye on it as the unwanted dogs limp down to the river panting and the next night looms.

[13:35]

Dusk the name no one answered to. Gone off to live by itself, beneath the pine trees, separating the houses, without a friend or a bed, without a father to tell its stories. How hard was the path that walked on, all those years belonging to none of our struggles, drifting under the calendar page, elusive as residue, when someone said, How have you been? It was strangely that name that tried to answer. I appreciate what big readers many of you are, and I've always made it a habit to enter libraries wherever I can.

[14:40]

even if you can only stay for a minute, just to feel that presence of all the books you haven't read yet. Burlington, Vermont. In the lovely free public library, only library I ever met that loans out garden tools as well as books. Lakes, long-handled clippers from large buckets by the counter, I sat in a peaceful room with citizens I will never know, reading about faraway war, war I am paying for, war I don't want and never wanted, and put my head down on the smooth wooden table, wishing to weep loudly or quietly, it did not matter, in the purifying presence of women and men, shovels and hoes devoted to growing." for your beautiful garden. Many of us in the poetry group entered the garden, opened the gate, went into the garden for the first time today.

[15:48]

And we couldn't figure out why we'd ever do this before. I think we felt it was off limits because there were gates or we weren't the gardeners. But what a precious pleasure to walk into the garden and find chairs in there, places welcoming to all of us here. I noticed in the bookstore, a great kindness, a book of mine that no bookstore ever orders is in there, and I'm really pleased to see it. It's a book of little non-fiction essays called I'll Ask You Three Times, Are You Okay? Maybe they thought it was a Zen title. Yeah, it sounds a little Zen. So I thought, since that book is in there, and It started out simply as conversations with taxi drivers, but it grew into, in real ones, in many places, it grew into also some essays are included in which I'm the driver and people are in my backseat.

[16:54]

So this is the piece, though, in this other book that swerved into that whole book. This is the piece that triggered it, and it's not in that book. How to get there. For any of you who drove the Takahara Road with wonderment, if it was your first time, curiosity. How to get there. And this is a couple of paragraphs. At 7 a.m., a driver from a car service comes to collect me on the drizzly Upper East Side of Manhattan, where I am a house guest. I need to go to Patterson, New Jersey. to stomp around with junior high school students for the day. Patterson, New Jersey, please, I say. And the driver with his beautiful accent says, tell me, how did you get to New Jersey? Is he kidding? I live in Texas. I know how to get from San Antonio to San Angelo.

[17:57]

Obviously, we must cross a bridge or traverse a tunnel to go from Manhattan to Jersey, but which one beats me? Call your office, I say. He doesn't have a phone in the vehicle. So I urge him, pull over and find myself trumpeting out the window. How do we get to New Jersey at every third corner? No one looks surprised. Lean Latino men step closer to help us. Sleepy grandmas point damp newspapers. And they know. They all know something. If we don't speak to strangers, what will we do in a moment like this? I translate everybody's fast English into slower English for my driver. He is careful with his pedals. He barbs his head in that graceful subcontinental way. As soon as we're safely tucked onto the bridge, I ask where he's from.

[18:57]

Bangladesh. I've been there twice. He turns his whole head around. So look at me. Every driver I've had in this city is from Pakistan, Palestine, Trinidad. It's a federation of bravery, the city's wheels steered by the wide world. You saw my country, he says brightly. I saw it. I didn't drive there, though. I didn't either, he says. I just got my first license three months ago when I arrived here. We miss an exit. Actually, we miss a whole level of road. He says cheerfully, oh my goodness, we want it to be up, but we're down. Then he says, first time I was driving, someone wants to go to Newark Airport. I don't know. I say, where is it? And they get very angry. They are shouting, drive, drive, telling me where to go.

[20:03]

Actually, that is what my company says. You only learn by going. When I leave them, I try to come back to New York City, but two hours later, it is dark, and a policeman by the side of road tells me I am going to Florida. Florida! Did you ever go to Florida? Forever, I say. We roar into a gas station where I ask... a lavishly tattooed man about Patterson. And he tells, luckily there is not much traffic in our direction this morning. We are able to ease in and out of the flow. Now I am growing worried about my driver getting back to Manhattan with the horrendous traffic moving the other way. We pass houses with their eyes still shut, worlds we know not of, worlds we know too well. kids with book bags, a thousand little turn-offs, graffiti, pink trees.

[21:09]

Is it nice in Texas? He asks. Very nice, I say. You could drive there a lot. Finally, we pull up in front of a brick building in Patterson, where I think I am supposed to be, 15 minutes early. We made it! He turns around. to hold my hand a long time. My friend, he says. We made it, yes, we did. And I don't even know how to ride a bicycle. So, your time now. Thank you. So, our best learning happens when we don't know. Now we're going to have an instant not knowing. Could you stand up, please? Okay, let's see how much you can not know.

[22:10]

Can you close your eyes and not know where you are? And listen carefully for clues? Is that a subway? Or is it a creek? Or an overpass? And not knowing a body? What is it? What kind of clues are coming from this existence called the physical body? Are the sensations at the feet? a sensation of skin touching air or air touching skin? Does this body breathe?

[23:30]

And what exactly is a chair? What am I just sitting down not knowing what a chair does. Sitting down to discover. Is it as you've heard rumored that a chair can support your weight? Why don't you sit down carefully? Because maybe the rumor is not true. That was it. That was nice. Thank you, Paul. You're welcome. Would you like to do anything else?

[24:33]

Next time you call, I'll do something. Okay, then. Thank you. Well, I was invited to tell a story. Again, apology to anyone who was in San Francisco Wednesday night, but I'll make it quick. No, no, no. It doesn't have to be quick. Okay. Just make it medium. Every January, February, I usually go work in a school in one or two other countries, an international school or an American school. It's just been a habit over the years. That's the time of year ago. So this year I went to Rabat American School in Morocco. Worked with all the kids from K through junior high, middle school. Beautiful school. Every classroom opens out into green yard, sort of a patio style with red tile roofs.

[25:34]

And a lot of love there. Everything's blue and white at the school. So in the fourth grade, the teachers did ask me outside the door. All the fourth graders were gathered into one big room. would you like us to tell you anything about this group? I said, no. So inside, we spent two hours together and reading, writing, doing exercises, this and that. And when it was time for them to read, they had seven-minute writing time. A boy was the first to volunteer, and I noticed the teacher's looking very surprised. And his name was Omar. He stood up. I had no idea it was the first time he'd raised his hand since September when he started at that school. So he took his poem and he said, we'd been writing odes, by the way. Egypt. I hear you. He was from Egypt. I hear you calling to me like a bright yellow flower across Libya, across Algeria.

[26:43]

Your voice finds me But here I sit in sad Morocco, trapped. I hear you calling me. Egypt, don't ever stop calling me. I'm listening to your voice, your pedals. I will come back to you someday. And I saw the kids turning to him like the tuning fork had just been struck and looking so interested in him. not realizing that was the first time they'd ever heard his voice. And when they'd all read their poems, and it was time for lunch, and he got up and started out the door. They all flocked around him, and I was eavesdropping, and they were saying things like, Miracle's not set. We have white flowers in the soccer field. Haven't you seen them? Can I sit by you at lunch? I didn't know you were so homesick. This is hard. This is... And I was thinking...

[27:45]

I was thunderstruck, and the teachers, with tears, were saying, they've never heard his voice. We've never heard his voice. He wouldn't speak. He was so homesick. He was so alien, feeling alien. But suddenly, he was the star on the basis of one poem expressing one simple longing with one metaphor, Egypt as the flower. And so I watched them at lunch. They all ate outside at the school, how they were crowding Omar's table. everybody wanting to show him a good time, a better time. And by the end of the week, his life had changed. And the teacher said, who would think that one poem could completely change someone's relationship with all his peers, but if that's the first time they've heard your voice, why not? Well, many of us had our lives changed by one poem, had our lives comforted or uplifted or we were found by a poem when we needed it.

[28:51]

A poem came along and carried us. So it didn't seem that unusual to me at all. But since they hadn't been writing poems in that class, the teacher said it was so easy for him to come out. Just a couple of other poems. Pollen. Sometimes in the mornings the sense of knowing tickles the windows, mechanical thuds outside, gears shifting, engines waking up like bees doing the waggle dance in front of the hive. Even if I don't know what that yellow machine means exactly, it companions me.

[29:52]

Man in a bucket, examining high light, repairing wires nibbled by squirrel. World's at work in the hopeful hour. Things put together won't dissolve, disappear. Did you know bees ventilate their homes by hovering outside? and fanning their wings light passes through thinking helps us find a field again there was no wind I don't know why I would tell an outright lie to someone I never saw before but when she asked did you close this door in an accusing tone I said no The wind closed it. She gave an odd look, pushed the door wide open, left it that way.

[30:53]

I felt strange the rest of the day walking around with a stone on my tongue. I think I read this here last year which surprised me then that I would choose it to read here. It just seemed a weird selection. But now I have a postscript, so I have to read it. The cat plate. That's what we used to do in our house, says Lydia, when we were mad at our dad. We served him on the cat plate. He didn't know since he never fed the cat. It made us laugh secretly in the kitchen. The plate had a crack. so maybe some cat saliva sucked in there. It gave us a little buzz. Once, when he was being really mean, he grabbed what he thought was tuna in a glass container, but it was cat food.

[32:01]

Our mother, washing dishes, froze with her mouth wide open when she realized. I shook my head, finger on my lips. From the living room he said, this tuna has taken on a new taste. No one told. We just did our homework silently at the kitchen table and grinned when we caught each other's eye. There were all kinds of ways we felt better about our lives back then. And sometimes they surprised us. So... I read that here, I guess, the beginning of June. And in August, last summer, I went back to that neighborhood. And I thought, who knows? We had a reunion, nine of us used to play together on that block, including the daughter of that man. And so we said to her, so what happened to your parents? She said, they're still in there.

[33:03]

So we went and knocked on the door. She didn't want to go with us. She hid behind a tree down the street. Just the kids they hadn't seen in 44 years knocked on the door. And we went in and he was mean to us. Especially to me. And I felt really glad I'd written that poem. I never thought I'd see him again. That was an empowering poem moment. So, time for maybe just a couple, two more? Did we want to have any more conversations or anything with anyone? It's up to you. Yeah. Does anyone have any answers you'd like to throw into the air or cat plate stories or poetry stories? What one poem came along and found you once?

[34:09]

Yes. How did you learn to see what you see? Thank you. What a beautiful question. How did you learn to see what you see? I was very hungry for seeing as a child. I was just an avid observer, always staring at everything and eavesdropping and scribbling notes down. Becoming a writer was nothing to do with a future career or future vocation. It was a way that helped me pay attention better to the days. And every day had something in it worth noting down. Often it was something I would imagine no one else had noticed in my house or classroom or on the street and for me to write it down was just kind of a gift of attention back to myself.

[35:20]

Growing up I often felt language was so fascinating and my parents were quite particular about words and English was not my father's first language so he was always quite exacting and wanting to pick the precise verb and the best noun and working on his language always. And my mother loved language, although she had been a painter. But there was a very keen sense of language as having power, and yet I often felt frustrated by language being used in directive ways or argumentative ways or ways that didn't make you feel comforted or satisfied or kind of an open-ended you know, argument or words missing. In my friends' houses where they were yelled at a lot. We weren't yelled at a lot, but there was often that sense of words kind of missing. So I wanted a place where words could be peaceful also and do something that helped me see and I could go back to later.

[36:33]

So they never had to be big. Nothing had to be big. Little things seemed more available and honorable. And luckily I had a mother who read us poems and a second grade teacher who believed poetry was at the center of the universe. And she, Harriet, the great, great, legendary Harriet Lane of St. Louis City Public Schools, who taught in public school until she was 89. refused to retire, was pressured to retire and would not retire. She had her students memorize poems, write poems weekly, learn the names of poets. William Blake felt as close to us as our friend because she believed we could understand him or Emily Dickinson or Langston Hughes, all the names that became part of our vocabulary and so just that one teacher who loved poetry so much was enough confirmation to kind of underscore what I'd already imagined that it mattered to write these little things down thank you for asking that though it helped me live to see through words at breakfast

[38:04]

Well, I think cab drivers are pretty zen a lot of the time. Pretty zen people, so there does seem to be some kind of linkage. I would think if you were a cab driver here, you'd know all the destinations. But only if you really wanted to. Actually, I'm surprised how many cab drivers mention zen. I've had many say things. I think some of these show up in that book. I'm not sure. You ever heard of Zen? Or, you know, very unexpected people. So there is maybe an instinct toward it. Thank you. Over 20, right? In the Umbrella Man book.

[39:10]

That's right. Some other people mentioned it in the Umbrella Man book, which I just have been reading. Fantastic. That's right. We're almost there. We're almost there.

[39:25]

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