16 pages • 32 minutes read
Naomi Shihab NyeValentine for Ernest Mann
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1994A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Further Reading & Resources
Related Poems
"Burning the Old Year" by Naomi Shihab Nye (1995)
Nye’s short poem about the experience of facing a new year is full of rich imagery as she finds poetry in unexpected places and examines the passage of time and its effect on humanity.
"Blood" by Naomi Shihab Nye (1995)
Nye’s poem examines the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as well as her Arab American roots, describing a childhood experience of coming to understand her identity. The poem ends with a set of questions born out of desperation: “Who calls anyone civilized? / Where can the crying heart graze? / What does a true Arab do now?”
"Sky" by William Stafford (1998)
Nye’s mentor, National Book Award winner William Stafford, shared her sense of poetics and often looked for poems in unexpected places. This poem, which Nye read at a 2010 Poets Forum discussion on inspiration, functions on multiple levels, as a direct address to the sky but also as a rumination on human relationships.
"Ars Poetica" by Archibald MacLeish (1985)
A classic example of the Ars Poetica form, MacLeish’s version ends with his famous lines: “A poem should not mean/but be” (Lines 23-24).
Further Literary Resources
19 Varieties Of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East by Naomi Shihab Nye (2005)
A finalist for the National Book Award, Nye’s 2002 collection further examines her experiences as an Arab American and earned a great deal of critical praise. Kirkus Reviews noted that “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” (“19 Varieties of Gazelle.” Kirkus Reviews, Greenwillow Books, 1 Apr. 2002, www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/naomi-shihab-nye/19-varieties-of-gazelle/)
In 2010, Nye participated in a panel discussion with a number of other poets on the subject of inspiration. The Academy of American Poets edited her responses into a video where she describes some of her influences and ways of thinking about poems. She specifically notes the importance of being in conversation with poetry, rather than just reading and receiving it: “We collect poems that encourage us to think in a way that we need to think, or look at the world. But then we also should allow ourselves—whatever our circumstances, or whatever our past history with writing—to write a little bit."
At the 2015 National Book Festival, Nye again joined fellow poets to talk about her work. In this edited video, she particularly addresses how she see’s the poet functioning in contemporary American society and the responsibilities the poet has to his or her community.
In March of 2021, Nye joined fellow poet Danusha Laméris to discuss the role of poetry in the wake of a difficult and different pandemic year.
In her role as Young People’s Poet Laureate, Nye participated in a 2020 digital series, providing a special reading and a question and answer segment.
Listen to Poem
In this video for the Academy of American Poets, Nye reads her poem and discusses the impetus for writing it.
Related Titles
By Naomi Shihab Nye
