19 Varieties of Gazelle: Interpretive Post #2

     I feel that I should start of by saying that this whole work of poetry is based on 3 main ideas. Naomi searches for peace, grace, and equality. As I stated in my first interpretive post, I feel that she relates our problems in the United States to several of her own countries' issues. In a way I feel as if she searches for the reasons why we can not have equality. Why must there always be war?
    "For years the Arab poets used 'gazelle' to signify grace, but when faced with a meadow of leaping gazelle there were no words," Naomi says in her poem 19 Varieties of Gazelle. I wish that our first assignment was to pick out a quotation from any of her poems instead of the introduction, because I would have picked that one. It is hard for many people in the world today to be able to find grace or elegance in the simple things in life. I think throughout this poem she was trying to say that there are several types of Gazelles that you could find grace through, whether it be a purebred animal or a mixed breed. If there are that many types of Gazelle and they keep their peace and grace why can't humans? The animals don't judge one another based on color of coat, size, or heritage.
    Gazelle are peaceful towards one another. There may be a fight over a female or a mother protecting her children, but other than that they keep the peace between each other. "As long as the question-what if I were you?-has two heads," she says in her poem How Long Peace Takes. I think that by this she means several things. It is one thing to say to someone "take a walk in my shoes," it  is another to actually realize what others go through on a day to day basis. People are often not grateful for the lives they have,while others are sitting in a ditch somewhere hiding from firing guns.
     Perhaps if we were all Gazelle, we would see life differently. We would live in a judgmental free place. We would all live as equal.