"I kept thinking, as did millions of other people, what can we do? Writers, believers in words, could not give up words when the going got rough. I found myself, as millions did, turning to poetry. But many of us have always turned to poetry. Why should it be any surprise that people find solace in the most intimate literary genre? Poetry slows us down, cherishes small details. A large disaster erases those details. We need poetry for nourishment and for noticing, for the way language and imagery reach comfortably into experience, holding and connecting it more successfully than any news channel we could name."
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Novelists from the United StatesShort story writers from the United StatesEditors from the United States20th-century poets from the United StatesSongwriters from the United States
Original Language: English
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from the introduction to 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East (2002)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Naomi_Shihab_Nye
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Naomi Shihab Nye
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