Naomi Shihab Nye has said, "For me the primary source of poetry has always been local life, random characters met on the streets, our own ancestry sifting down to us through small essential daily tasks." Thus she announces her major themes. In poems described by Alison Heineman (Pawn Review, 1980-1981) as "quiet, intimate, contemplative," Nye observes the business of living and the continuity among all the world's inhabitants, whether separated by oceans or time. She lives in Texas but is regional only insofar as she has a strong sense of place wherever she happens to be; she is international in scope and internal in focus, as her poetry demonstrates. She began writing poetry when she was six and published her first poems at seven in Wee Wisdom, a children's magazine.

Naomi Shihab Nye was born on 12 March 1952 in St. Louis to Aziz and Miriam Naomi Allwardt Shihab, and...