Jerusalem

“Jerusalem” first appeared in Naomi Shihab Nye’s poetry collection Red Suitcase (1994, BOA Editions). Nye is a well-known American poet who is the daughter of a Palestinian refugee father and an American-born mother. The poem explores conflict in the titular city of Jerusalem where her father was born and where he fled because of the conflict between Palestinians and Jews after the creation of the State of Israel. Nye lived there as a child for a full year when her family went to live with her grandmother on the West Bank. The poem calls for a healing between the warring factions, stating that the speaker is not interested in who has suffered the most, but rather in people “getting over it” (Line 4). Like many of Nye’s poems, she embraces a call for unity.

Poet Biography

Born on March 12, 1952, Naomi Shihab Nye lived in St. Louis, Missouri until she was 14. Her father was a refugee from Palestine, and her mother was a Montessori school teacher of Swiss-German descent.

Hearing the American poet Carl Sandburg read on television one day was an experience that she says has stuck with her all her life. She started writing poetry at six years of age.