Your Poetry Fix: Before You Know Kindness
As a shadow, or a friend.
HI
I wanted to find the absolute perfect poem for you, this week of all weeks, as America and its people reckon with yet another reimagining. Weighing options, I kept coming back to Naomi Shihab Nye’s “Kindness”. It’s one of those poems: You’ve probably heard it before, maybe once or a dozen times. Maybe you’ve heard it read by someone with grief catching in their throat, tears filling their eyes. Or maybe you’ve heard it anoint a crowd in a reverent hush, touching some place in everyone that longs for compassion.
Regardless, it’s never enough; its words never age; I always want to hear it again.
Or perhaps this is the first time you’ll hear it, in which case: Welcome.
“Kindness” is the poem for when your mind is a hollow buzz, when the world doesn’t make sense, when your bones hurt and your heart feels bigger than your body. It’s the poem to cling to as change works its way through you, through the world. This is the poem that helps you hold out a hand to the universe, to begin to find your way.
Naomi Shihab Nye, beloved American poet, is an author, professor, and recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Book Critics Circle, many Pushcart Prizes, and a dazzling array of honors. From 2019 to 2022, she served as the Poetry Foundations’s Young People’s Poet Laureate.
Ready? Press play.