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Nikki Giovanni (June 7, 1943 – December 9, 2024) was an American poet, writer, commentator, activist, and educator.
- Poetry is the culture of a people. We are poets even when we don’t write poems; just look at our life, our rhythms, our tenderness, our signifying, our sermons and our songs.
- Gemini: An Extended Autobiographical Statement on My First Twenty-five Years of Being a Black Poet. Penguin Books. 1976. p. 95. ISBN 978-0-14-004264-1.
- Poets shouldn't commit suicide. That would leave the world to those without imaginations or hearts. That would bequeath to the world a mangled syntax and no love of champagne. Poets must live in misery and ecstasy, to sing a song with the katydids. Poets should be ashamed to die before they kiss the sun.
- On her poem “Poets” in “Poet Nikki Giovanni On The Darker Side Of Her Life” in NPR (2013 Oct 29)
- You have to read the poem and say, “My god, that’s a good poem,” and kind of smile at yourself. If you’re not willing to do that, then you’re wasting your time, and you’re hurting yourself in another way because you’re trying to please somebody who doesn’t like you. You don’t want to get in that position.
- On poets having to trust themselves in “Nikki Giovanni on trusting your own voice”] in The Creative Independent (2017 Apr 24)
The Women and The Men (1970)
I. The Women
- it is not unusual
that the old bury the young
though it is an abomination
...those who make war
call themselves diplomats
...the unfaithful pray loudest
...we judge a man by his dreams
not alone his deeds
...by his intent
not alone his shortcomings
...it is not unusual
to know him through those who love him
- The Women Gather (for Joe Strickland)
- ...i sit waiting
for a fresh thought
to stir the atmosphere- The December of My Springs
II. The Men
- they say you should fight the cold with the cold
but since i never do anything right
i called you- Hampton, Virginia
- how do you write a poem
about someone so close
...don't you already know
what i feel and if
you don't maybe
i should check my feelings- How Do You Write A Poem?
II. And Some Places
- if nature is true
we shall all lose our eyes
since we cannot even now distinguish
the good from the evil
...i've a mind to build
a new world
want to play- A Very Simple Wish
- ...do you ever stop
to think what it looked like
before it was an avenue
...ever look south
...and see gazelles running playfully
after the lions
...did you ever, sit down
and wonder about what freedom's freedom
would bring
...the Iroquois, Alonquin
and Mohicans... could caress
the earthever think what Harlem would be
like if our herbs and roots and elephant ears
grew...
the parrot parroting black is beautiful...ever think it's possible
for us to be
happy- Walking Down Park
- if trees could talk
wonder what they'd say
met an old man
...told me "girl! my hands seen
more than all
them books...
at tuskeegee"
...met an old woman
..."sista" she called to me
"...my feet
seen more than yo eyes
ever gonna read"
...if trees would talk
wonder what they'd tell me- Alabama Poem
- if it does not sing discard the ear
for poetry is song
if it does not delight discard
the heart for poetry is joy
if it does not inform then close
off the brain for it is dead
if it cannot heed the insistent message
that life is preciouswhich is all we poets
wrapped in our loneliness
are trying to say- Poetry
Paint Me Like I Am (Dec 2003)
- : Teen Poems from WriterCorps. Introduction.
- We need food for the Soul
We need poetry ... We deserve poetry
Paint me Hopeful Paint Me Futuristic Paint Me Nikki I'm a Poet
“Nikki Giovanni: Interview" (2008)
- Mosaic Magazine (Aug 1, 2008) Source.
- History is wonderful. We have so much we can learn if we would quit making ideology out of history, and just deal with what happened…
- NOTE: On writing without historical references.
- Politics is personal. That, however, doesn’t mean it’s ideological. It means that one cares about what she or he is doing, what he or she is writing…
- NOTE: On the politics seeping into the personal.
- As a writer, one has to be willing to be wrong, willing to make mistakes. I’ve put everything on the table and accepted the fact that I may come up short. And, if (or when) I do, that’s okay.
- NOTE: On accepting fault as a writer.
ego-tripping (2013)
- : and other poems for black people
- There is a game I must tell you of
It's called Catch the Leader Lying
(and knowing your sense of the absurd
you will enjoy this)
...
You must invent your own games and teach us old
ones how to play- poem for black boys (with special love to james) (2 Apr 67)
- Black love is Black wealth and they'll
probably talk about my hard childhood
and never understand that
all the while I was quite happy- nikki-rosa (12 Apr 68)
- let's build
what we become
when we dream- word poem (perhaps worth considering) (12 Apr 68)
- then I awoke and dug
that if i dreamed natural
dreams of being a natural
woman doing what a woman
does...
i would have a revolution- revolutionary dreams (20 jan. 70)
- ...as i grew and matured
i became more sensible
and decided i would
settle down
and just become
a sweet inspiration- dreams (2 oct. 68)
The Authority of a Writer (2024)
- : An Interview with Nikki Giovanni. Interview by Jan McDaniel. A Source.
- If I were advising someone on a writing career, the deal is this: write. If you get it published, good. If somebody pays you, better, because you have to eat, but the deal is you have to write.
- The authority of the writer always overcomes the skepticism of the reader.
- I'm a big fan of the black woman and so I'm always looking at aspects of the black woman--what she's doing and how she does it.
- At the library I would go the shelves alphabetically. I was drawn to anyone with a female name, with a Latino or Spanish name. There were very, very few. But as a teenager I discovered African American poetry. Gwendolyn Brooks was the first. Then Phillis Wheatley. I really identified with this slave woman writing poetry to assert and affirm her humanity. Suddenly my eyes were open to history. There was a whole explosion of African-American women poets-Audre Lorde, Nikki Giovanni, June Jordan. I have a poem in my head that's going to take me years to write down. Its working title is "On Thanking Black Muses." I owe them, because poetry really changed my life, saved it.
- Lorna Dee Cervantes Interview in Fooling with Words: A Celebration of Poets and Their Craft by Bill Moyers (1999)
- (At National Black Theater performance) I was in awe of the words I witnessed that day. It was the first time that I heard the works of writers like Gwendolyn Brooks, Nikki Giovanni, Langston Hughes, Amiri Baraka. I heard poetry that was about me, that was very immediate. I connected to it in a visceral way. That experience moved me so profoundly that I went home and that night I wrote my first batch of poems. It was like the floodgates opened. That reading empowered me with a voice and gave me permission to express everything that had been festering in me for years. So I just started experimenting with language and writing all kinds of things.
- Sandra María Esteves interview (2001) in A Poet's Truth by Bruce Allen Dick
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