Making “I Still Have Everything You Gave Me” by Naomi Shihab Nye

I Still Have Everything You Gave Me

It is dusty on the edges.

Slightly rotten.

I guard it without thinking.

Focus on it once a year
when I shake it out in the wind.

I do not ache.

I would not trade.

Naomi Shihab Nye

//

The grit of this poem appeals to me. I like its staunch acceptance of what’s difficult and its self-determination re: what’s worth keeping. When I first read it, I thought of past romantic relationships, my first marriage in particular. But over the months of working with it, setting and re-setting and setting once again, I’ve found myself thinking about longer arcs of legacy. Generational ones. Especially as I feel this baby growing inside me (six months now!), I’m thinking a lot about what I carry from my parents but also what they carry from their parents, and how different those relationships are than mine with my grandparents, and theirs with their grandparents. So much is so difficult when held up close but as new generations come there’s opportunity to skip back one or two and find new value in what’s old and perhaps terribly hard for our parents.

I’m wondering if it’s possible to be free and rooted at the same time. What does that look like? I think it feels like this poem. Acknowledging what you have, what you hold from people and past experience. Naming the dirt, dust, hurt. Being willing to give it a good shake and let the wind air it out. And deciding to carry forward what still feels useful. 

I felt quite conflicted growing up about how I could be a good human when my father was not. How I could survive when my brother could not. How I could be well when my mom was not. It isn’t easy to separate one’s sense of self from one’s immediate family. But when I look farther back, stories of my relatives feel more free, and easier to take or leave what feels good and what doesn’t. I think it’s because I never needed anything directly from those people — many I never met but am deeply comforted by, like my great grandmother who could make and do anything, from fancy lined dresses to wallpapering to wiring the house when electricity first came to the rural valley they lived in.

The line “I guard it without thinking” gave me pause at first reading of this poem and still does. It makes me a bit uncomfortable. I pride myself in my ability to think deeply and make decisions analytically. But of course I know there’s plenty, oh so plenty I hold onto and protect that may or may not be healthy for me, and that I don’t think about at all on the daily. How can one? Loss after loss does tend to make you hold on harder to what’s not gone, no matter how rotten. Some reprieve follows though, thanks to the wind. Outside gets to come in and clean things out periodically. I love where the poem ends—refuting ache, resisting the idea of something different being better. Which is where I’ve always landed when failing to reconcile the drama of the family stories I carry and the story I live and build day to day. Fact is, I am who I am thanks to all of them. Each year, good and bad feels less important to assign because it’s true: I would not trade. I may never be able to reconcile the loss I’ve experienced but I am able to appreciate the moments of my life more each day.

Today, I’m so happy to share this new broadside with you. I’ve wanted to do a project with Naomi Shihab Nye for years and have checked all her books out from the library more than once. Most recently this past fall, in anticipation of SAL bringing her to Seattle this month. A magical evening it was! With all due respect to the library, it was actually at Elliott Bay that I found the book this poem is in: Fuel. I sat and read the whole book in the store and found this poem on the last page. It struck me in that certain way — that way an uncomfortable yet irrefutable truth finds you and sinks right in. I sighed and closed the book and bought it on the spot. I reached out to BOA Editions for permission and then delved into design… which took way more time than I anticipated!

My first thought was a 6x9 inch format — which is where I landed in the end. But in between I set the poem at least six times, in different typefaces, mostly 18pt, and pulled all kinds of type for the title, playing around with larger formats, grander scale. I got a lot of iterations I liked but none that felt right until I set the poem yet again, in 14pt Perpetua this time. The smaller type lends intimacy, I think, to the interiority this poem speaks from. And it allowed for a greater contrast with the titling type, yet still on a smaller sheet. It didn’t take long to find the balance of aligning the title right, opposite the poems alignment left; I love how “You” and “wind” hang into the margins equally unabashed.

I printed this broadside on the Vandercook, even though I could have done it much, much faster on the Windmill. I needed the slowness to settle into the design. Printing for me is always a process of letting go; I make many minute changes on press and often resist the moment of committing to the finality of printing for hours, feeling unsure and finicky about very hard to see spacing. It’s hard to let go of possibility and say that this one iteration, among the infinite, gets to be made. That it’s good enough.

Happily, I had a hard deadline for this project. The chance to meet Naomi and present her with the print in person! Which I got to do two weeks ago. She is as gracious a person as you’d expect, lovely to interact with on every front. What most surprised me, and delighted, is that she is as hilarious as she is humble; as capable of lightness as she is of holding unimaginable heavy. A real gift of a person, intensely present, alive, and so precise in her observation and expression. I am honored I got to meet her and work with her words.

Do go to your local bookstore or library and find Naomi's books! And enjoy this broadside, which she was kind enough to sign many copies of.