Kindness
Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem “Kindness” appears in
her first collection of poems, Different Ways to
Pray, published in 1980. The tone, themes, and
ideas presented in this inaugural volume establish
Nye’s core message as a poet and as a human be-
ing: All of humanity is worthy of respect, de-
serving of consideration, and in need of kindness.
“Kindness” is reprinted in Nye’s 1995 collection
Words under the Words, which compiles selec-
tions from her first three books: Different Ways to
Pray, Hugging the Jukebox(1982), and Yellow
Glove(1986).
The poet’s many travels have taken her to
some of the world’s most prosperous countries and
thriving cities as well as to some of the harshest
and poorest lands, where violence, hunger, and in-
justice are common. One such place is Colombia,
a country in northwestern South America. In
Colombia, the natural beauty of a lush landscape
with mountains and rivers is sometimes overshad-
owed by the ugliness of social oppression, govern-
ment corruption, drug trafficking, and violent
crime. Somewhere within this ironic blend of na-
ture’s magnificence and society’s decadence, Nye
finds a reason to believe in the power of simple
acts of kindness. This belief is the inspiration for
her poem of the same name, which signs off with
the single word “Colombia” below the work’s fi-
nal line. In the original version in Different Ways
to Pray, the poem ends with “(Colombia, 1978).”
Despite its attention to loss and desolation,
“Kindness” is a positive poem with an optimistic
Naomi Shihab Nye
1980
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