Valentine for Ernest Mann

"Burning the Old Year" by Naomi Shihab Nye (1995)

Nye’s short poem about the experience of facing a new year is full of rich imagery as she finds poetry in unexpected places and examines the passage of time and its effect on humanity.

"Blood" by Naomi Shihab Nye (1995)

Nye’s poem examines the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as well as her Arab American roots, describing a childhood experience of coming to understand her identity. The poem ends with a set of questions born out of desperation: “Who calls anyone civilized? / Where can the crying heart graze? / What does a true Arab do now?”

"Sky" by William Stafford (1998)

Nye’s mentor, National Book Award winner William Stafford, shared her sense of poetics and often looked for poems in unexpected places. This poem, which Nye read at a 2010 Poets Forum discussion on inspiration, functions on multiple levels, as a direct address to the sky but also as a rumination on human relationships.

"Ars Poetica" by Archibald MacLeish (1985)

A classic example of the Ars Poetica form, MacLeish’s version ends with his famous lines: “A poem should not mean/but be” (Lines 23-24).