Naomi Shihab Nye, a Palestinian-American poet born in St. Louis and raised in Jerusalem and San Antonio, focuses on the ordinary to observe the extraordinary. Her poetry often speaks of cultural encounters and celebrates different cultures. She is the recipient of many awards and is currently the Poetry Foundation's Young People's Poet Laureate.

In this poem, we explore what makes a poem "poetry" versus some other genre, and we consider what difference such designations make while walking through a longer, narrative poem.

For the text of the poem, see here: https://poets.org/poem/gate-4

For more on Naomi Shihab Nye, see the Poetry Foundation: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/naomi-shihab-nye

This poem comes from Honeybee: Poems and Short Prose.

The image has a creative commons license and can be found here.