The Sacrament of a Shared World in “Gate A-4” by Naomi Shihab Nye

November 13, 2018

Both “Grace” by Gary Snyder and “Gate A-4” by Naomi Shihab Nye explore the act of eating as a sacrament undertaken in connection with other people; Nye’s work, however, creates this act, showing what Snyder tells through language-play and repetition, as well as symbolic imagery and heightened emotion. The distinctions between them are made even more clear in that her work is prose poetry, having all the appearance of prose as used by Snyder yet illustrating the embodied beauties of poetry which he is unable to express completely. Nye ultimately shows that food is not a dead thing but a conduit for connection across both space and time, a substance through which people see themselves within the greater totality of life.

In her work, Nye is able to show eating as an act that does not take place in isolation but connects people to a shared world; through the use of poetic repetition in conjunction with lived action and imagery, she foregrounds the idea of eating as a sacrament or ritual. In his work, Snyder says plainly that “eating is a sacrament” which “clears our hearts and guides the children and welcomes the guest all at the same time” (125). Nye, however, acts out each aspect of this statement through poetic language and imagery. When the women eat such that they are “all covered in the same powdered sugar” they are also said to immediately be left “smiling” – their hearts are clear (Nye 23). The little girls, covered with this same powdered sugar, are said to “serv[e] [them] all apple juice,” the act of sharing food literally guiding the children down the aisles (25). The narrator, for her part, thinks “they took they cookies” followed immediately by “I wanted to hug all those other women too” (31-32); she sees the women sharing in the food and wants to show them affection, to make them feel welcome just as she brought a sense of the familiar to the Palestinian women, and just as the airline “broke out free beverages” for all their guests (24). These expressions of affection are all grounded in verbs (the characters are serving, taking, hugging) suggesting that food is part of a physical, embodied ritual in which people reach out to one another, an outward expression of kindness representative of the inner spiritual grace they all feel in eating together. This wholeness is likewise seen in Nye’s use of poetic repetition throughout these lines, specifically in the word all. Each verb does not exist in isolation, but is applied to the greater whole, all meaning the greatest possible amount. The sacrament taking place is not for a select few, but for every woman present. Her prose poetry effectively invokes the language present in Buddhist verse as cited by Snyder yet is largely absent in Snyder’s own prose; one verse reads, for example: “all demons and spirits … all be filled and satisfied” (125). This idea of an all, a totality, is also seen in Nye’s extensive use of similar-sounding words like “anyone” or “any” (2-3), “always” (27-28) or “anywhere” (33), words that like all imply the greatest, widest spread of applicability. The sacrament these words are used in association with is thus one that can occur throughout the entire world, to anyone anywhere, because people and life exist around the world – it is the “shared world” that the narrator talks about (30). Nye even repeats twice that “not a single woman declined” a cookie, as if suggesting that, in that moment, no “single woman” existed – they were all united in sacramental grace (21). In consumption, the single unit cannot exist; they are the “numberless,” saving each other by sharing with each other, and being saved in turn (Snyder 123). The all sound is also seen in Nye’s use of the word “call,” a verb, each invocation of it connecting the characters of the poem with the larger, shared world: they “called” the Palestinian woman’s son, “called” her other sons, “called” the narrator’s father to find they had “ten shared friends” (14-17). The poem is about connection, how food serves the same function as a phone call in being able to connect people around the world we all share. The narrator’s suggestion that they “call some Palestinian poets” (17) suggests as well that poetry is connected to this process, that it is able to say something that mere, plain, spoken language cannot, and that in writing poets show the reader what it means to find connection with another through food, making them feel that connection through their own reading.

Nye’s poem is also able to convey the power of food to create connectivity across both space and time through her careful selection of poetic images and objects. Snyder likewise builds on the idea of connection by suggesting that, by speaking some sort of grace over one’s food, even if part of that grace is merely an announcement, it “connects us with our ancestors” (126). It is thus interesting that at the very beginning of Nye’s work she hears a spoken “announcement” over the PA system, calling the narrator by virtue of their shared heritage to a woman with a dress “just like [her] grandmother wore” (5). This woman, the woman with the mamool cookies – an intrinsically Arabic food – serves as a reminder of the narrator’s ancestry. She is connected across time to her family, her heritage. In this sense, it is also significant that people from across the world (Argentina, California, Laredo) are all said to be covered with “the same powdered sugar” of the mamool cookies (22-23); by setting the poem within an airport – a place of connections, the converging point for a network of flights across the world – and by anointing each of them with the cookie powder, a symbol of tradition, heritage, and ancestry, Nye effectively suggests that human beings internationally share a common ancestry as living beings. This is possibly why she specifies that her narrator is not just at an airport, but an airport “terminal” (1). As Snyder suggests, food is a reminder of mortality, the shared connection tying all living creatures together being the fact that “we are all edible” (125). Being in an airport terminal, surrounded by people of diverse looks and behaviours, one’s attention is called to those few things which connect everyone – the reality that we will all die. By making an airport the location of her poetic food sacrament, Nye reminds the reader that everyone’s condition is terminal.

Ultimately, Nye’s poetry is able to embody the ideas also seen in Snyder’s text by its nature as poetry – a lived narrative with characters told through symbolic objects and language play. By playing out the sacrament of eating among peoples of different cultures and through reminders of a shared ancestry, she effectively cements the act of eating together as symbolic of humanity’s shared nature and fate as living beings. That which can connect us in a moment, consumption, is but a taste of life’s final consumption.