In class on Monday, we began to identify a few prominent themes in Nye’s poetry and examine some of her purposes for writing. Our discussion only scratched the surface and did close reading of a few poems. In your blogs, you can go further with what we discussed and apply some of those ideas to other poems in the collection. What are these poems suggesting about humanity, connection, knowledges, perception, stereotypes, etc.? What is Nye painting a picture of as important and why that and not something else? How is she trying to shape what we are seeing and how we are seeing it?
The introduction to her book also provides some excellent starting points for writing. Taking a point she makes there and trying to see how and where it plays out in the poetry one way to do literary analysis of this work.
For example, on pg. xii, she talks of people as “disconnected dust.” How might that compare to the way she writes about connection in poems like “Two Countries” or “How Long Peace Takes” and others? She also describes children as sheltered, tended “birds.” Contrast that image with some of the stories of schoolchildren or images of young people found in various poems. What is she showing in these contrasts?
We touched briefly on the theme of hope in class, how her writing in response to 9/11 nevertheless has a hopeful feeling often. Where does that hopefulness come from? Where do we see it in the poems? In the Intro, she talks of “gazelles” that are “leaping toward the horizon with hope” (xii). This image seems especially important because of the title of the book. Try to examine these gazelles a bit more. What do they represent in the poem “19 Varieties of Gazelle”? Why name the book after them?
In another piece of Nye’s writing, she claims that “poetry humanizes us.” What do you think that means and how does it play out in this collection? How might this connect to her ideas of what “a true Arab” is or is not? Nye writes in the Intro of feeling as if she and others are “writing parts of a great collective poem” helping her to feel “rooted and connected” (xiv). What does she mean by that? What role is writing/storytelling playing in her work in general? And why is that important? Why extend that connection to us as readers?
Go deeper into this theme. Nye says that she writes so she “could think over” things (xiii), that “poetry slows us down, cherishes small details” (xvi), that “writers believe in words” (xvi). All of these phrases seem to connect to the idea that she seeks to mend a gap that exists between people. She finds healing in a variety of places and people, like her Grandmother: “What wisdom did she know that all these men can’t figure out?” (xviii). What underlying meanings is Nye exploring in these passages and in the poems that connect back to these passages.
Finally, if you want, try to place this poetry in its larger context. In the Intro, she talks about unbalanced media representation of the Middle East following 9/11 and the “sorrowful headlines in the background to carry around like sad weights” (xiv). How is her poetry a response to all of that? Go further and look at the long history of war and violence in the Middle East, especially between Israel and the Palestinians. What happened, for example, in 1948? How does the poetry weigh in on that conflict and its historical complexities?
As I said before, this is just a start if you need it. You may have questions and ideas and connections of your own to explore, and that’s fine too. Think through these points as you consider what to write but also as you continue to read. We will hopefully come back to some of these questions in Friday’s class as well.
