If "The Prophet" is accepted on its own terms as a poetic work, regardless of its distinction from prevailing modes, one is struck by its direct engagement with common life…. It is time to accept Gibran not as a foreigner who wrote books in English, but as an American, with his difference and with his gifts. Let "The Prophet" and Kahlil Gibran enter the canon of American literature. The book and its author have been standing outside its rusty gates long enough.