Mint Snowball

Poetry. "Some of you may have encountered a wee chapbook of paragraphs from State Street Press called MINT that was first printed in 1991. If you were one of the people who liked that collection, or especially one of the generous teachers who used it in your classes, I thank you. This gathering contains some (not all) of those same pieces as well as more recent ones" - Naomi Shihab Nye, about MINT SNOWBALL. Read more Continue reading Read less FROM PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Two new small-press titles rescue under- or unpublished work from well-known poets. Written over a decade ago but withheld from publication, Burkard's ninth book of poems is his second to arrive this year, his Unsleeping (Forecasts, Dec. 18, 2000) having just appeared in February. What emerges through these diaristic poems of the mid-'80s is a portrait of an alcoholic acquainted with violence but not quite on the road to recovery. We get glimpses of an unhappy childhood, of the internal compulsion to drink and of an adult who is both abandoned by loved ones and left to find consolation through poetry: "I ask the night to have a heart,/ a small word or two, a mouth/ to speak to you from and two lips to kiss you." The poems in this volume were mostly passed over when the selected Entire Dilemma (1998) was being assembled; that volume continues to represent Burkard at his best. A rolling repository of narrative incidentals, Nye's Mint Snowball, some of which was first published in 1991 as Mint, playfully documents Nye's chance encounters with friendly cab drivers, smalltown restaurateurs and fellow travelers from Texas to Nepal. The title, harkening back to her great-grandfather's recipe for shaved ice and mint syrup, points to the author's effort to retrieve the refreshing particulars of the everyday histories of common people: "Who are we now as opposed to all those earlier selves? I vow to find out. The life of poetry pins us to the minute. Do we fit?" Disjointed and sometimes cacophonous voices enter the fray, but Nye's own story as an American-born Palestinian locates the commonalities among the different groups of people that she writes about. Readers familiar with the economy of language that is characteristic of her previous seven collections of poetry may be disappointed by the limited lyric handiwork in this new book, but these 58 short narratives have a touching anecdotal quality perhaps more reflective of her technique as an author of children's books.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. REVIEW
Nye is a good witness. She is aware of the small but meaningful details of her surroundings; she's curious ... --Seattle Stranger, Oct. 4, 2001 ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born of a Palestinian father and an American mother, Naomi Shihab Nye grew up in St. Louis, Jerusalem and San Antonio, where she graduated from Trinity University. She still lives a block from the San Antonio River, with her husband, photographer Michael Nye and their son. She has worked widely as a visiting writer. Nye is the author of seven poetry collections and a number of award-winning books for young readers. She is featured on two PBS documentaries,The Language of Life with Bill Moyers, and The United States of Poetry. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, two Jane Addams Children’s Book Awards and the Witter Bynner Fellowship from the Library of Congress. She is also the poetry editor for The Texas Observer. She traveled abroad on three Arts America tours sponsored by the United States Information Agency.

Read more Continue reading Read less