Whenever someone suggests "how much is lost in translation!" I want to say, "Perhaps but how much is gained!" A new world of readers, for one thing. - Naomi Shihab Nye

As a direct line to human feeling, empathic experience, genuine language and detail, poetry is everything that headline news is not. It takes us inside situations, helps us imagine life from more than one perspective, honors imagery and metaphor — those great tools of thought — and deepens our confidence in a meaningful world.

"Poetry is like language soup, the taste of different flavors. Sometimes you just like the way a word sounds, pressed up against another word." She said poetry was contagious. In a good way. (p184)

Some people let their countries become their religions and that didn't work either. (p174)