I Feel a Little Jumpy Around You: A Book of Her Poems & His Poems Collected in Pairs
By Naomi Shihab Nye and Paul B. Janeczko
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About this ebook
In this insightful anthology, the editors grouped almost 200 poems into pairs to demonstrate the different ways in which male and female poets see the same topics. How women see men, how boys see girls, and how we all see the world—often in very different ways, but surprisingly, wonderfully, sometimes very much the same.
Naomi Shihab Nye
Naomi Shihab Nye was born in St. Louis, Missouri. Her father was a Palestinian refugee and her mother an American of German and Swiss descent, and she spent her adolescence in both Jerusalem and San Antonio, Texas. She earned her BA from Trinity University in San Antonio. Naomi Shihab Nye describes herself as a “wandering poet.” She has spent more than forty years traveling the country and the world, leading writing workshops and inspiring students of all ages. Naomi Shihab Nye is the author and/or editor of more than thirty books. Her books of poetry for adults and young people include 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East (a finalist for the National Book Award); A Maze Me: Poems for Girls; Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners; Honeybee (winner of the Arab American Book Award); Cast Away: Poems of Our Time (one of the Washington Post’s best books of 2020); Come with Me: Poems for a Journey; and Everything Comes Next: Collected and New Poems. Her other volumes of poetry include Red Suitcase; Words Under the Words; Fuel; Transfer; You & Yours; Mint Snowball; and The Tiny Journalist. Her collections of essays include Never in a Hurry and I’ll Ask You Three Times, Are You Okay?: Tales of Driving and Being Driven. Naomi Shihab Nye has edited nine acclaimed poetry anthologies, including This Same Sky: Poems from Around the World; The Space Between Our Footsteps: Poems from the Middle East; Time You Let Me In: 25 Poets Under 25; and What Have You Lost? Her picture books include Sitti’s Secrets, illustrated by Nancy Carpenter, and her acclaimed fiction includes Habibi; The Turtle of Oman (winner of the Middle East Book Award) and its sequel, The Turtle of Michigan (honorable mention for the Arab American Book Award). Naomi Shihab Nye has been a Lannan Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a Witter Bynner Fellow (Library of Congress). She has received a Lavan Award from the Academy of American Poets, the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award, the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award, the Paterson Poetry Prize, four Pushcart Prizes, the Robert Creeley Award, and "The Betty," from Poets House, for service to poetry, and numerous honors for her children’s literature, including two Jane Addams Children’s Book Awards. In 2011 Nye won the Golden Rose Award given by the New England Poetry Club, the oldest poetry-reading series in the country. Her work has been presented on National Public Radio on A Prairie Home Companion and The Writer’s Almanac. She has been featured on two PBS poetry specials, including The Language of Life with Bill Moyers, and she also appeared on NOW with Bill Moyers. She has been affiliated with the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin for twenty years and served as poetry editor at the Texas Observer for twenty years. In 2019–20 she was the poetry editor for the New York Times Magazine. She is Chancellor Emeritus for the Academy of American Poets and laureate of the 2013 NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature, and in 2017 the American Library Association presented Naomi Shihab Nye with the 2018 May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecture Award. In 2018 the Texas Institute of Letters named her the winner of the Lon Tinkle Award for Lifetime Achievement. She was named the 2019–21 Young People's Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation. In 2020 she was awarded the Ivan Sandrof Award for Lifetime Achievement by the National Book Critics Circle. In 2021 she was voted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Naomi Shihab Nye is professor of creative writing-poetry at Texas State University.
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Reviews for I Feel a Little Jumpy Around You
3 ratings4 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/54Q 4P (my VOYA ratings). Naomi Shihab Nye and Paul B. Janeczko bring their award-winning poetry compiling skills together for "I Feel a Little Jumpy Around You," an anthology of poems in pairs from the perspective of men and women on different life topics. The poems all roll off the tongue, or the page, and seem to touch the heart, as if they know what you know. The poems touch on love, family, society, war, all of what we know in this life. Although the pairs are showing perspectives of men and women, sometimes this perspective is similar even if told with different words. I give this anthology a 4 for quality, because I did really enjoy it but there wasn't anything that seemed to break boundaries. I gave a 4 for popularity because I think teens would like this book of poetry, but it might take some encouragement to pick it up.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is a paired collection of his and hers poems, though most of them to me didn't seem to deal with gendered issues. I did enjoy some of them, but others just weren't my cup of tea. I can recognize though that this is a quality collection, so I gave my rating to reflect that.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/54Q, 3PI am not partial to poetry, but the way each of these stories were paired provided great insight into how men and women think differently (and in some cases alike) in regards to major themes in life (family, marriage, love, school, growing up). The raw emotion, the subtle longing, or the gentle reflection captured by some of the poems were particularly compelling. I appreciate that many of the poets feature poems of adolescence and growing up, but I feel that this book is not aimed at young adults. Certain topics will be unappealing for the very young, and the figurative language will be difficult to grasp (for instance the topic of marriage). This is definitely a book that should be given to older teens, or certain paired poems chosen for younger teens depending on their development and age.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/55Q 4PThis book is such a unique idea - it pairs poems together, one written by a man and the other a woman, in order to illustrate how men and women see the world differently (including how they see each other). The juxtaposition of the male and female perspective shows how truly different we can be from one another, and how surprisingly similar at times. As Nancy Vasilakas, from Horn Book Magazine, points out "Sometimes the juxtapositions are obvious, but not always, and part of the fun of the book is delving into the poems deeply enough to discover some faint or unexpected clue to the male-female conundrum.
Book preview
I Feel a Little Jumpy Around You - Naomi Shihab Nye
I Feel A Little Jumpy Around You
JUMPY AROUND YOU
Paired Poems by Men & Women
Naomi Shihab Nye and Paul B. Janeczko, editors
SIMON PULSE
First paperback edition January 1999
Copyright © 1996 by Naomi Shihab Nye and Paul B. Janeczko
SIMON PULSE
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
Pages 247-256 constitute an extension of this copyright
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
Also available in a Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers hardcover edition.
Book design by Heather Wood / The text for this book is set in Horley Old Style
Printed and bound in the United States of America
7 9 10 8 6
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Nye, Naomi Shihab.
I feel a little jumpy around you : a book of her poems and his poems presented in pairs Edited by Naomi Shihab Nye & Paul B. Janeczko—1st ed.
p. cm. Includes index.
Summary : A collection of poems, by male and female authors, presented in pairings that offer insight into how men and women look at the world, both separately and together.
ISBN-13: 978-0-6898-1341-2
eISBN-13: 978-1-439-11615-9
1. Children’s poetry, American—Women authors. 2. Children’s poetry, American—men authors. 3. Women—Juvenile poetry. 4. Men—Juvenile poetry. [1. American poetry—Women authors—Collections. 2. American poetry—Men authors—Collections. 3. Women—Poetry. 4. Men—Poetry.] I. Janeczko, Paul B. II. Title.
PS3564.Y44I4 1996 808.81—dc20 95-44904
ISBN 0-689-81341-4 (pbk.)
The title of the collection I Feel a Little Jumpy Around You is taken from the poem Jump City
by Harryette Mullen on page 95. This poem first appeared in her collection Tall Women (1981).
A note on the cover paintings.
Deborah Maverick Kelley and Anthony Russo did not see each other’s paintings until the dust jacket for the hardcover edition of this book was printed, nor did they discuss the subject matter for the art. Deborah’s painting existed as a finished piece, and Anthony was commissioned to paint a picture of a cake, a bride, and a groom.
A note on the running dialogue:
Naomi Shihab Nye and Paul B. Janeczko did most of their work on this volume by fax.
Excerpts from those faxes are printed on page 23, and on pages 219-246.
www.SimonandSchuster.com
—N.S.N.
For Joan Darby Norris and Barry Norris, my favorite she/he duet from way back when
—P.B.J.
With love, for Mary, a sister whose formative years were enriched by the four best brothers a girl could hope for. There’s no need to thank us
Contents
Introductions
Reflections, Carole Satyamurti
Heads on Fire
Two Set Out on Their Journey, Galway Kinnell
Over the Pass, Julie M. Convisser
The Sky Is Blue, David Ignatow
A Geography of Lunch, Mary Jo Schimelpfenig
Sunday, B. Vincent Hernandez
Paper Matches, Paulette Jiles
Snowmen, Agha Shahid Ali
Alloy, Robin Boody Galguera
For My Father, Philip Schultz
Primer, Chana Bloch
Vocation, William Stafford
Telepathy, Linda Besant
Yellow Delicious, Samuel Hazo
The Apple-Eater, Linda Curtis Meyers
Coloring Book, Robert Farnsworth
On Foot I Had to Walk Through the Solar Systems, Edith Södergran
The Pee Wee Coach, Walter McDonald
Feminism, Denise Duhamel
Before Sleep, Moshe Dor
Second Childhood, Robin Boody Galguera
What a Boy Can Do, Alberto Ríos
Red Cross Lessons at City Park Pool, Melody Lacina
La Sequia, Alberto Ríos
My Father’s Garden, E.K Miller
Two Facts, David Huddle
Pokeberries, Ruth Stone
Taking the Hands, Robert Bly
From Him, Andra R. Davis
The Belt, Eric Chock
Touch, Kathryn Kerr
Size Is Relative, Chuck Martin
Rose, Cill Janeway
Boyhood Winter, George Eklund
A Suburban Childhood, Liz Rosenberg
Sins of the Fathers , Mark Vinz
My Daughter at 14: Christmas Dance, 1981, Maria Mazziotti Gillan
The Mystery, David Wevill
Gifts, Judy Ruiz
Father Falling, Peter Desy
Our Room, Molly Peacock
Once a Long Time Ago, Phillip Lopate
Mattress Fire, Penny Harter
Step on His Head, James Laughlin
The Struggle, Toi Derricotte
Passages, Mark Vinz
Looking for Him, Patty Turner
Remembering Brother Bob, William Stafford
The Exciting New Concept of Art Therapy, Marlys West
A Story, Li- Young Lee
The Lizard’s Tango, Lucia Casalinuovo
The Backup, Wing Tek Lum
Black Patent Leather Shoes, Karen Mitchell
Short-Wave, Christopher Cokinos
For My Father’s Mother Who Has Alzheimer’s, M. Eliza Hamilton
I Just Wanna Testify, Cornelius Eady
Anti-Father, Rita Dove
Foreign Exchange
The Skokie Theatre, Edward Hirsch
The Youngest Children of an Angel, Anna Swir
He, Philip Booth
Foreign Exchange, Marion Winik
Fet Walks Melody Home, Gary Hyland
Questions and Answers, Diana O’Hehir
Steven Pudenz, Paul Bonin-Rodriguez
Dirty Panes, Judith Barrington
Nineteen, George Bogin
All Their Names Were Vincent, Miriam Kessler
The Inner Man, Charles Simic
The Locker Room, Nora Mitchell
In the Orchard, Gevorg Emin
Summer, At Home, Mary Clark
January, Cornelius Eady
Where Are You Going?, Nellie Wong
Spoon, Conrad Hilberry
Equality, Nina Cassian
Hey Sweetie, Albert Goldbarth
Conversation with a Fireman from Brooklyn, Tess Gallagher
Proposal, Kim Stafford
Fish Fact, Pamela Alexander
The Ubiquity of the Need for Love, Ronald Koertge
Love, Grace Paley
Goodbye Note to Debbie Fuller: Pass it On, David Clewell
Performances, Nina Cassian
Meaning Well, Jack Gilbert
Jump City, Harryette Mullen
The Passion and Woe in Marriage: A Ukranian Love Story, Peter Oresick
Quarrel, Grace Paley
Your Hands, Gevorg Emin
Two Men, Anne Waldman
January, William Virgil Davis
The Yellow Hills in Back, Christianne Balk
For Night Comes, Gunnar Ekelöf
Marriage, Joan Logghe
Estrangements, William Pitt Root
The Friendship, Toi Derricotte
Gone Away, Hugo Williams
We Were Love, Yaedi Ignatow
Dressed Up, E. Ethelbert Miller
With Reservations, Naomi Stroud Simmons
The Real Thing, Ronald Wallace
Astonishment, Anna Swir
Autobiography, Tommy Olofsson
The Clothespin, Rhonda Bower
Surplus Blues, Raymond R. Patterson
This Woman, Donna Trussell
Goodbye, Robert Long
Elevator, Naomi Shihab Nye
Namelessness, David Wevill
Reach, Phyllis Janowitz
The Real Names of Everything
Ode to Tomatoes, Francisco X. Alarcón
Canning Season, Wendy Barker
It Happens Working, Richard E. McMullen
To a Set of Drawing Pencils, Fay Lipshitz
For the Woman at the Fast-Food Fish Place Who Called Me Pig, Gary Margolis
Momma Sayings, Harryette Mullen
The Pyramid of Khufu, Khaled Mattawa
Wheelchairs That Kneel Down Like Elephants, Karen Fiser
The Previous Occupant, Agha Shahid Ali
Carpenter’s Daughter, Cathy Young Czapla
War, Gregory Orfalea
West Grand Boulevard, Faye Kicknosway
Cow Worship, Gerald Stern
Cow, Joan Fern Shaw
Typographical Errors, Geof Hewitt
Teaching Myself to Read, Karen Fiser
Kitchens, Eric Nelson
Living Lean, Christine Hemp
The Old Dream Oven, Jacinto Jesús Cardona
The Dream Kitchen, Sandra M. Gilbert
A Plague of Telephones, Jim Wayne Miller
Long Distance Calls, Marylee Skwirz
Mother, Zbigniew Herbert
The Teacher I Wanted to Be, Ingrid Wendt
Lament for an Old Woman, Albert Huffstickler
One Man’s Family, Rosemary Catacalos
The Unwritten, W. S. Merwin
Emily Dickinson’s To-Do List, Andrea Carlisle
A Little Piece of Sky, Sharif Elmusa
War Rug, Natasha Waxman
Plant Poem, Edward Field
Letting the Parakeet Fly, Judith Steinbergh
small poems, Robert Burlingame
Elegy, Linda Pastan
Separate Lonqinqs
Revelations, First Time, Roger Jones
Androgeny, Yaedi Ignatow
The Shapes of Leaves, Arthur Sze
Images, Marilyn Williams
Burning the Dolls, Richard Peabody
The Field Trip, Ellen Bryant Voigt
Summer Morning, Charles Simic
Depending on the Light, Andrea Potos
August, Shuntarō Tanikawa
When I Was Young on an Island, Diane Hina Kahanu
How to Hug Your Three-Year-Old Daughter, Paul B. Janeczko
4 daughters, Lucille Clifton
Disappearing, David Clewell
Medusa Cement, Alise Alousi
The Lion Tamer, Paul Durcan
Tallness, Paulette Jiles
Who’d Want To Be A Man?, Gregory Orr
To Be A Woman, Daisy Zamora
Lunchtime, David Ignatow
Peace, Leslie Ullman
The Onion Woman, Ted Kooser
My Mother’s Blue Vase, Jeannette Doob
Everyone, Shuntarō Tanikawa
String Affair, Margo LaGattuta
The Family, William Freedman
April Rape, Marilyn Nelson
On M. Butterfly, Wing Tek Lum
Tracing Back, Jane Mayhall
A Missed Opportunity, James Tate
Snow, Donna Trussell
We Say, Reginald Gibbons
Dennis’s Sky Leopard, Thylias Moss
Wild Strawberries, Ronald Wallace
Camellias, Linda Pastan
Dressing My Daughter, George Eklund
Fitting Room, Lois Marie Harrod
Beginnings, Michael Burns
Late, Watching Television, Del Marie Rogers
Golden Season, Kurtis Lamkin
Dark Song, Martha Zweig
Driving My Parents Home at Christmas, Robert Blly
I Remember the Room Was Filled with Light, Judith Hemschemeyer
Was It, Philip Booth
Coats, Jane Kenyon
Romance, Gerald Stern
Archaeology, George Ella Lyon
The Congressman Visits the Grade School, James Hathaway
The Secretary Chant, Marge Piercy
Mountain Men, Tom Clark
Bali Hai Calls Mama, Marilyn Nelson
Here I Am, Li-Young Lee
The Lost Girls, Linda Hogan
Travelling Together, W. S. Merwin
Contributors’ Notes
Acknowledgments
Index of Poems
Index to Female Poets
Index to Male Poets
Introductions
Growing up in New Jersey in the 50’s, my heroes included Willie Mays, Abbott and Costello, Sid Caesar, and Tommy Acker, a classmate of mine in seventh grade, who got a nun to faint with his patented Acker Attack, i.e., sliding out of his desk to the floor and rolling his eyes up into his head. My father—a 50’s dad: aloof, hard working, stolid—wasn’t my hero, although he should have been because of the lessons I learned from him. That happened years later when I came to understand what he did for my mother and his five kids. No women were my heroes. Not my mother. She was … my mom, and moms weren’t heroes. Not in the 50’s. Most of them, like mine, stayed at home and coped with being a housewife. Little did I know the heroic efforts it takes to do that job well.
My family came in two stages. The first included my parents and my two brothers and me, born within a five-year span. Long before Bruce Springsteen, my father was The Boss. He was the breadwinner, which frequently meant working a couple of jobs. Until early high school, my best friends were my brothers. We played ball together for endless hours. We watched out for each other. One of us would always stand lookout while the others scampered onto the school roof looking for lost baseballs. We served mass together. We delivered papers together. And we got in trouble together.
Another brother joined our merry band when we were seven, nine, and eleven. He was, of course, welcomed by us. I’m sure my mother, tiring of the antics of four boys, must have desperately craved for a sister of the soul. She got her wish two years later when our sister was born. Arriving a few days after Halloween, her birth did little to distract us from our trick-or-treat goodies.
Although my brothers and I enjoyed mistreating her when we were growing up, we were also fiercely protective of her. We could tease and hassle her, but if anyone else tried that, he (or she) would have to answer to us. And that went for her dates, who were often interviewed
by my brothers or me before she could leave the house with them. Although my sister claims she never wanted or needed us to intervene in such a way, my brothers and I know that secretly she was touched by our concern.
Despite my traditional upbringing, I’ve been able to discard many of the macho shackles of the 50’s. I do most of the cooking, even asking, on occasion, for my wife to leave my
kitchen. I’m satisfied being a breadwinner. I believe that there are differences between men and women, but they shouldn’t stop my daughter from pursuing whatever passions seize her soul.
Don’t ask me how I was able to make that change. Like most important changes, this one has many causes. A major one is my wife, a strong woman—a hero for the work she does for abused children—who takes (and deserves) much credit for showing me the light. And my daughter, who, by spreading her energetic magic, demands that I pay attention to her as well as to my feminine side. And the times. They’ve changed a great deal since the days when I didn’t bother to think much about the differences between men and women. The men’s movement
has made it more acceptable for a male to question his role in society.
The time is right for me to put together this collection of poems because it is about perceptions. How men and women poets perceive the world, their feelings, and themselves. And, how we perceive each other. Many of these poems surprised me because they were not what I expected to hear from a man or a woman. From that surprise came the delight of having my expectations shaken up, of being shown that there is room for me to grow and learn.
Reading poetry, by men and women, continues to make a difference in my life. It sensitizes me to the feelings of others. And it helps me to face many of my own feelings. I agree with Philip Booth, who said that a good poem makes the world more habitable … [it] changes the world slightly in favor of being alive and being human.
What other reason do we need for making poetry a vital part of our lives?
Paul B. Janeczko
When I was growing up in St. Louis, the geographical heart of the United States, I never felt any particular power exercised over me because I was female. No one ever said, You can’t do this because you’re a girl,
or You shouldn’t do that…
The world felt inviting and open, and the possibilities of my life as richly various as any boy’s on the block.
Despite the fact that my father came from what many people might identify as a patriarchal Middle Eastern culture (Palestinian), he seemed to have transcended the old roles of his heritage in my upbringing. I did feel my independent-minded, articulate mother standing up for women’s choices
(when I wanted to work on a farm picking berries with a bunch of boys, for example) more than once, which I will always appreciate. But other women of her generation probably also had to speak up this way, even with nativeborn American husbands.
I was aware that women didn’t have it so easy
in other parts of the world. Perhaps I was twelve before I seriously contemplated being a girl. And then it was only because of that gloomy girl talk
they gave us in health class. …
My brother and I both liked reading, music, riding bicycles, baseball in the back lot. We both made pot holders on little red looms. He was a soprano; I was an alto. Although he played with matchbox cars while the treasure of my early years was a life-size doll, such distinctions seemed insignificant. We were a closely knit tribe, and equally mischievous. I might have said, as late as high school or college, that boys and girls were constitutionally the same.
Now, as a mother and wife, I would not say that. Even if boys and girls are the same for brief eras, it’s obvious men and women aren’t. I would arm-wrestle over this. I realize I walk