18 pages • 36 minutes read
Naomi Shihab NyeA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
“Gate A-4” has been published both as a short story and a prose poem. The prose poem version contains enjambment, which means that some sentences continue over the line break and on to the next line without a pause, giving the prose sentences a “poetic” quality. In “Gate A4,” other poetic qualities are observable in the speaker’s deliberate use of everyday diction and idiomatic speech. Striking visual imagery and evocative symbols are also present in the poem, offering the reader opportunities to imagine the airport scene for themselves and to feel the mood of the poem according to the reader’s own associations with the images and symbols at play.
The action of the poem is spare and immediate, contained within the setting of an airport terminal: A vulnerable woman misunderstands something important, then understands, thanks to the kindness of a stranger. The shifts in the mood of the poem, from ominous to optimistic, are more complex than the actual events of the poem, which suggests that the speaker believes that the internal, emotional lives of the individuals involved are more important than their external actions.
By Naomi Shihab Nye
300 Goats
300 Goats
Naomi Shihab Nye
Alphabet
Alphabet
Naomi Shihab Nye
Blood
Blood
Naomi Shihab Nye
Burning the Old Year
Burning the Old Year
Naomi Shihab Nye
Different Ways to Pray
Different Ways to Pray
Naomi Shihab Nye
Famous
Famous
Naomi Shihab Nye
Jerusalem
Jerusalem
Naomi Shihab Nye
Kindness
Kindness
Naomi Shihab Nye
Making a Fist
Making a Fist
Naomi Shihab Nye
Morning Song
Morning Song
Naomi Shihab Nye
My Uncle’s Favorite Coffee Shop
My Uncle’s Favorite Coffee Shop
Naomi Shihab Nye
Shoulders
Shoulders
Naomi Shihab Nye
The Art of Disappearing
The Art of Disappearing
Naomi Shihab Nye
The Rider
The Rider
Naomi Shihab Nye
The Turtle of Oman
The Turtle of Oman
Naomi Shihab Nye
The Words Under the Words
The Words Under the Words
Naomi Shihab Nye
Valentine for Ernest Mann
Valentine for Ernest Mann
Naomi Shihab Nye