Different Ways to Pray

“The Words Under the Words” by Naomi Shihab Nye (1995)

Printed in her 2005 collection Words Under the Words: Selected Poems and originally published in 1995, this poem has many similarities to “Different Ways to Pray,” including content and form. The poem takes place in Jerusalem and notes many aspects of the Middle East where the speaker’s grandmother lives. Like “Different Ways to Pray,” “The Words Under the Words” is divided into several stanzas, each of which describes another aspect of the speaker’s grandmother’s life.

“A Palestinian Might Say” by Naomi Shihab Nye (2019)

Published in Nye’s recent collection The Tiny Journalist (2019), “A Palestinian Might Say” explores what it is to feel like an outsider in one’s country solely because of one’s ethnicity or race. Nye, who is half Palestinian and identifies as an Arab American, understands how difficult it is to live in a place that once felt like home and to experience that feeling of “home” taken away.

“There Are Birds Here” by Jamaal May (2016)

Written for the city of Detroit, an area that has seen poverty and destruction over the 20th and 21st century, May’s poem “There Are Birds Here” was published in his collection The Big Book of Exit Strategies (2016).