19 Varieties of Gazelle - reflections

My first reaction to 19 Varieties of Gazelle was one of curiosity, I guess, at the title. I tried my best to make sense of it, but could not. It did not seem like a title that would help the book fly off of shelves at the local Barnes and Noble. When I came across the word "gazelle" in the intro (xii) I did not notice it until a second read-through. When I came across the poem with the same title, I paid special attention to the content, hoping that I would be able to discover something new and especially wise. I believe there may be something there, but I was unable to discover it with the time and attention I was able to afford this particular poem. It is easy to tell that the subject is of great import to the author, and that the gazelle is an important symbol. I am not able to decipher this poem, however, be it for lack of cultural or literary understanding. I am no more able to tell another the importance of the book's title that I was when I found it, but at the same time, I'm not bothered by that.

This text is my favorite of the three that I read for this week (Others include The New Kid on the Block and Joyful Noise). Before diving in to this title, I performed my typical ritual of reading both covers, all the introductory notes, and dedications, and then the introduction. I was moved by the introduction to this text, and felt an overwhelming but very subversive sadness coming through in the author's notes. Starting with the note on how none of the three major western religions take the commandment "thou shalt not kill" seriously, and moving toward "Flinn, on the Bus," there is a lot of pain - pain of death, and pain from wrongful association and discrimination. The final line of "Flinn, on the Bus," captures the sentiment well - "He'd find out soon enough - Flinn, take it easy. Peace is rough." The narrator in this poem reflects about the difficulty that a newly released prison inmate will have when faced with the ugliness of the world. There are several vague references to the terrorist attacks from September 11 2001, and then the poem concludes with that memorable dateline, and it is made very clear to what the author is referring. From there, the author recollects with great fondness her father, his love for the Middle East, and her childhood with his story telling and fig tree. The author then transitions to a post 9/11 experience, and the juxtaposition goes further to establish a transcending theme. I found the following text to be tremendously thoughtful, deep, and filled with very real emotion that was easy to tap in to.

One example that I see of this comes in "Her Way" on page 22. When I read this, I envision a woman who has lost her family to war, and with it, everything. She copes with her loss by keeping busy at menial tasks which don't need doing - "dragging [the mops and buckets] from room to room in a house that already looked clean." She has replaced what once meant everything in life to her with chores - "She could place a child in a bucket and bathe it, could stitch the mouth in the red shirt closed." Nye's use of language is extremely precise in this poem and others. In this poem, with very few words, the narrator communicates very much. Nye tells about how media coverage minimizes the humanity and intimacy of war's casualties; though we can see the subject of this poem is devastated by war's casualties and the loss of her family, her experience is contrasted by "the men who editorialized blood till it was pale and not worth spilling..."

Another example comes from "For Mohamed on the Mountain." The hurt that the narrator feels for her own sake and for her father is sharp. I made the assumption when I read this that the narrator is the author - a sometimes careless assumption, but a safe one with this text, I think. This made the uncle's choice not to meet his brother all the more painful, as I recalled how proud the father was in the introduction, and how much he loved and longed for the Middle East. A happy and generous man by nature, it must have been tremendously difficult for him to face his own brother's complete rejection for the sake of living in and working in the United States. It must have been even more difficult for his daughter, the narrator of the poem, as we see that she continues to dream up scenarios that can explain away the very clear and painful truth of uncle Mohammed's rejection.

"Jerusalem" opens with the line "I am not interested in who suffered the most. I am interested in getting over it." One thing that I love about good poetry is that it speaks to more than its own immediate context. The history, war, death, and killing in Jerusalem's history is a great source of pain in countless peoples' lives throughout the world. I find it curious that I have not more often what Nye has to say about moving on and healing. The poem speaks on one level of boys fighting, and tender spots on men's heads "where hate won't grow." At the same time of course, it speaks of Jerusalem, and thousands of years of soldiers and fighting. When reading this - focusing on these themes, and of the line "a child's poem says, 'I don't like wars...'" I was brought back all the way to the introduction, and the author's reflection that "If grandmothers and children were in charge of the world, there would never be any wars."

I very much enjoyed this collection of poems, and I am very glad to have been introduced to Nye's literature. She is masterfully precise and purposeful with her use of diction and syntax, and her end product is overflowing with emotion and truth. The only thing that I am sorry for is that I felt rushed to push through a volume that I would have preferred to savor slowly... it felt at times like I was gulping down an 18 year old scotch for the purpose of finishing - rather than appreciating its finer details. I am a slow reader by nature, and when I come to work like this, I prefer to put the brakes on, hoping to understand each poem line by line, annotating the whole way through. This week, life did not allow me to take such a course.