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LYNNE THOMPSON: Hello! My name is Lynne Thompson, Poet Laureate for the City of Los Angeles and I’m so happy to welcome listeners to this installment of Poems on Air, a podcast supported by the Los Angeles Public Library. Every week, I’ll present the work of poets I admire, poets who you should know, and poets who have made a substantial and inimitable contribution to the art and craft of poetry.
LYNNE THOMPSON: There is a lovely writers’ conference that takes place in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. I was fortunate to attend one such conference and it was there that I met the American-Palestinian poet and teacher Naomi Shihab Nye. As generous of spirit as she is incisive as a poet, Naomi brought the attendees into a world filled with wonder. It’s a hallmark of her poetry and has, rightfully, resulted in her being selected as the Poetry Foundation's Young People's Poet Lau-reate. Nye has served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and is the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Texas Institute of Letters, among other myriad honors. She is the author of numerous collections of poetry for children and adults, most re-cently Everything Comes Next: New and Selected Poems.
LYNNE THOMPSON: Today’s poem is “Famous" by Naomi Shihab Nye.
Famous
The river is famous to the fish.
The loud voice is famous to silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anybody said so.
The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds
watching him from the birdhouse.
The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.
The idea you carry close to your bosom
is famous to your bosom.
The boot is famous to the earth,
more famous than the dress shoe,
which is famous only to floors.
The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it
and not all that famous to the one who is pictured.
I want to be famous to shuffling men
who smile while crossing streets,
sticky children in grocery lines,
famous as the one who smiled back.
I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.
LYNNE THOMPSON: The Los Angeles Poet Laureate was created as a joint program between the City’s Department of Cultural Affairs and the Los Angeles Public Library and this podcast will be available on the Library’s website. In the future, episodes will be available on iTunes, Google, and Spotify. Thanks for listening!
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- Back to Poems on Air: Episode 15
DISCLAIMER: This is NOT a certified or verbatim transcript, but rather represents only the context of the class or meeting, subject to the inherent limitations of real-time captioning. The primary focus of real-time captioning is general communication access and as such this document is not suitable, acceptable, nor is it intended for use in any type of legal proceeding. Transcript provided by the author.