19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East

by Naomi Shihab Nye

Overview

"Tell me how to live so many lives at once ..."

Fowzi, who beats everyone at dominoes; Ibtisam, who wanted to be a doctor; Abu Mahmoud, who knows every eggplant and peach in his West Bank garden; mysterious Uncle Mohammed, who moved to the mountain; a girl in a red sweater dangling a book bag; children in velvet dresses who haunt the candy bowl at the party; Baba Kamalyari, age 71; Mr. Dajani and his swans; Sitti Khadra, who never lost her peace inside.

Maybe they have something to tell us.

Naomi Shihab Nye has been writing about being Arab-American, about Jerusalem, about the West Bank, about family all her life. These new and collected poems of the Middle East — sixty in all — appear together here for the first time.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780060097653
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	04/16/2002
Edition description:	1 ED
Pages:	160
Sales rank:	329,536
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.12(h) x 0.65(d)
Lexile:	910L (what's this?)
Age Range:	13 - 9 Years

About the Author

Naomi Shihab Nye was born in St. Louis, Missouri. Her father was a Palestinian refugee and her mother an American of German and Swiss descent, and she spent her adolescence in both Jerusalem and San Antonio, Texas. She earned her BA from Trinity University in San Antonio. Naomi Shihab Nye describes herself as a “wandering poet.” She has spent more than forty years traveling the country and the world, leading writing workshops and inspiring students of all ages.

Naomi Shihab Nye is the author and/or editor of more than thirty books. Her books of poetry for adults and young people include 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East (a finalist for the National Book Award); A Maze Me: Poems for Girls; Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners; Honeybee (winner of the Arab American Book Award); Cast Away: Poems of Our Time (one of the Washington Post’s best books of 2020); Come with Me: Poems for a Journey; and Everything Comes Next: Collected and New Poems. Her other volumes of poetry include Red Suitcase; Words Under the Words; Fuel; Transfer; You & Yours; Mint Snowball; and The Tiny Journalist. Her collections of essays include Never in a Hurry and I’ll Ask You Three Times, Are You Okay?: Tales of Driving and Being Driven.

Naomi Shihab Nye has edited nine acclaimed poetry anthologies, including This Same Sky: Poems from Around the World; The Space Between Our Footsteps: Poems from the Middle East; Time You Let Me In: 25 Poets Under 25; and What Have You Lost? Her picture books include Sitti’s Secrets, illustrated by Nancy Carpenter, and her acclaimed fiction includes Habibi; The Turtle of Oman (winner of the Middle East Book Award) and its sequel, The Turtle of Michigan (honorable mention for the Arab American Book Award).

Naomi Shihab Nye has been a Lannan Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a Witter Bynner Fellow (Library of Congress). She has received a Lavan Award from the Academy of American Poets, the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award, the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award, the Paterson Poetry Prize, four Pushcart Prizes, the Robert Creeley Award, and "The Betty," from Poets House, for service to poetry, and numerous honors for her children’s literature, including two Jane Addams Children’s Book Awards. In 2011 Nye won the Golden Rose Award given by the New England Poetry Club, the oldest poetry-reading series in the country. Her work has been presented on National Public Radio on A Prairie Home Companion and The Writer’s Almanac. She has been featured on two PBS poetry specials, including The Language of Life with Bill Moyers, and she also appeared on NOW with Bill Moyers. She has been affiliated with the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin for twenty years and served as poetry editor at the Texas Observer for twenty years. In 2019–20 she was the poetry editor for the New York Times Magazine. She is Chancellor Emeritus for the Academy of American Poets and laureate of the 2013 NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s Literature, and in 2017 the American Library Association presented Naomi Shihab Nye with the 2018 May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecture Award. In 2018 the Texas Institute of Letters named her the winner of the Lon Tinkle Award for Lifetime Achievement. She was named the 2019–21 Young People's Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation. In 2020 she was awarded the Ivan Sandrof Award for Lifetime Achievement by the National Book Critics Circle. In 2021 she was voted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Naomi Shihab Nye is professor of creative writing-poetry at Texas State University.

Read an Excerpt

Steps

A man letters the sign for his grocery in Arabic and English.
Paint dried more quickly in English.
The thick swoops and curls of Arabic letters stay moist
and glistening til tomorrow when the children show up
jingling their dimes.

They have learned the currency of the New World,
carrying wishes for gum and candies shaped like fish.
They float through the streets, diving deep to the bottom,
nosing rich layers of crusted shell.

One of these children will tell a story that keeps her people
alive. We don't know yet which one she is.
Girl in the red sweater dangling a book bag,
sister with eyes pinned to the barrel of pumpkin seeds.
They are lettering the sidewalk with their steps.

They are separate and together and a little bit late.
Carrying a creased note, "Don't forget."
Who wrote it? They've already forgotten.
A purple fish sticks to the back of the throat.
Their long laughs are boats they will ride and ride,
making the shadows that cross each other's smiles.

—Naomi Shihab Nye

Table of Contents

	Introduction	x
Section 11
	Different Ways to Pray	3
	My Father and the Figtree	6
	What Kind of Fool Am I?	8
	Going to the Spring	9
	Biography of an Armenian Schoolgirl	11
	The Words Under the Words	14
	Spark	16
	The Man Who Makes Brooms	18
	The Garden of Abu Mahmoud	20
	Her Way	22
	The Clean Rinse	24
	For Mohammed on the Mountain	25
	Passing the Refugee Camp	30
	Lunch in Nablus City Park	35
	Arabic Coffee	38
	Red Brocade	40
	Steps	42
	Prayer in My Boot	44
	Things Don't Stop	46
	Even at War	50
	The Grieving Ring	51
	For the 500th Dead Palestinian, Ibtisam Bozieh	53
	Those Whom We Do Not Know	55
	Visit	58
	The Palestinians Have Given Up Parties	59
	The Small Vases from Hebron	63
	Darling	65
	Fundamentalism	68
	My Grandmother in the Stars	69
	Rock	70
	Praying for Wind	73
	Olive Jar	80
	They Dropped It	83
Section 285
	19 Varieties of Gazelle	87
	Arabic	90
	Jerusalem	92
	Holy Land	94
	Half-and-Half	96
	Stain	98
	My Uncle's Favorite Coffee Shop	99
	A Definite Shore	102
	Two Countries	104
	The Tray	105
	The Many Hats of William Yale	106
	What News Are You Listening To?	108
	Staying Close	109
	Ducks	110
	The Address Book of a Lonely Man	112
	Footfall	114
	Trenches and Moats and Mounds of Dirt	117
	What He Said to His Enemies	119
	Peace	120
	How Long Peace Takes	122
	A Single Slice Reveals Them	124
	Stone House	125
	Jerusalem Headlines 2000	128
	Mr. Dajani, Calling from Jericho	130
	All Things Not Considered	133
	Blood	136
	Postscript	139

Editorial Reviews

Finalist for the 2002 National Book Award, Young People's Literature

Award-winning poet Naomi Shihab Nye has brought together a collection of her poems about the Middle East, shedding powerful, tender light on a region filled with rich history and much turmoil. Nye, who is of Middle Eastern descent herself, speaks from the heart, capturing an entire culture in strong images -- especially in "Biography of an Armenian Schoolgirl," "Rock," and the poem that gives the anthology its title. Both remarkable and enlightening, this collection of poetry will help foster understanding in young and old alike for an area of the world most of us know only through nightly news broadcasts.

This elegant poetry collection evokes the sights, sounds, smells and tastes of the Middle East, especially Jerusalem, as experienced by a Palestinian-American. The sixty poems reflect the strength Nye derives from her father's family and the pain she feels reading "deeply sorrowful headlines" concerning Arabs. With so few books for teens by Arab-Americans, this moving collection is all the more important for those beginning to understand and appreciate Arab culture.

Kathleen Odean

Many of the poems, which focus on the Middle East and the Arab-American experience, have appeared in previous collections; others are published here for the first time. PW called this an excellent way to invite exploration and discussion of events far away and their impact here at home. Ages 12-up. (Mar.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Gr 6 Up-Nye is well known as an anthologist for children, but adults have enjoyed her poetry collections for years, and many of those selections, as well as new ones, are gathered here. In her introduction, she describes the effects of the events of September 11th on her and other Arab-Americans. An introductory poem is about that day in particular; otherwise, the selections are about her family, her visits to the Middle East, and her observations of events there in general. This offering is a celebration of her heritage, and a call for peace. In "Jerusalem," she says, "I'm not interested in who suffered the most. I'm interested in people getting over it," using her poetic voice to make her point clearly and powerfully. Other poems are more particular, using family members, or meetings with friends or strangers as the frames around which her image-rich world unfolds. "My Father and the Figtree": "For other fruits my father was indifferent. He'd point at the cherry trees and say, `See those? I wish they were figs.' In the evenings he sat by our beds weaving folktales like vivid little scarves. They always involved a figtree. Even when it didn't fit, he'd stick it in." Of particular use today, this is the kind of book that young and older readers of poetry will turn back to over and over.-Nina Lindsay, Oakland Public Library, CA Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

School Library Journal

In a collection as rich as the subject, Nye (Come With Me, 2000, etc.) brings together all of her poems about the Middle East, old and new, familiar and unknown. Opening with a poem about a young man just released from prison on the morning of September 11th, she follows with a reflection on what that day has meant for everyone, especially for Arabs and Arab-Americans, who, through Nye, say: "This is not who we are." She follows with exquisitely nuanced images of fig trees, grandmothers, Palestinian children, the loss of "pleasant pauses," and "The Man Who Makes Brooms." Asking "How Long Peace Takes," Nye writes, "As long as the question-what if I / were you?-has two heads," and answers a border guard, "We will eat cabbage rolls, rice with sugar and milk, / crisply sizzled eggplant. When the olives come / sailing past / in their little boat, we will line them on our / plates / like punctuation. What do governments have to do / with such pleasure?" Poem after poem will elicit a gasp of surprise, a nod of the head, a pause to reflect. There are no false steps here-only a feeling of sensory overload and a need to take a deep breath and reread or to find someone to share the intensely felt emotion that springs from the lines. In her closing poem, a musing on what one should have said, she writes, "Say it / as if words count." With this gifted writer, they really do. (Poetry. 10+)

Kirkus Reviews