Poems notes

Naomi Shihab Nye

• A contemporary American woman poet
• No rhyme scheme, no structure( free verse)
• Narrative---tells a story
• Autobiographical---own life
• family/people ( father, grandma)
• World not always a positive place
• Nature---peace
• Historical time period---Israel-Palestinian conflict
• Father Palestinian, mother America
• Grandma still lives in Palestinian

title---Blood: death/pain/violence/conflict

                    race/family/relationships/identity

“Blood”

Repetition “ a true Arab”

1. Knows
2. Believes
3. Would say
4. Do

Fly---fast, precise, patient

-Faith, believe in healing/nature

After 9/11---stereotypes about Arabs/ Muslims

Islamophobia people from the middle east, terrorist, violent

People in the small town are not respected them, the kid says want to see Arab, just like in the zoo.

9/11 kills people, her father even doesn’t want to kill a fly

Although her father knows the new, he can do nothing. Just do the thing her father thinks right.

“My Grandmother in the Stars”

• In this poem, there are three stanzas.
• It’s about she misses her grandma a lot in the first stanza(To think this fills my throat with dust)
• She thinks her grandma is the star so that the sky can tie Naomi and her grandma together
• (I bow to your rugged feet,
• Naomi remember the experiences with her grandma (the moth-eaten scarves that knot your hair), she wants to stay with her grandma again
• She really wants to meet her grandma, she says that although they can’t meet, their heart can connect together
• Now the only thing she can do is see her grandma in the memory(only memory making us rich)