The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni Read Free Page A

spiritual consultation
    let my world be defined by my skin and the color of my people
    for we          spirit to spirit          will embrace this world
    The centrality of race and gender in Giovanni’s poetry is evident throughout this volume, which brings together all of the poetry she published between 1968 and 1999. Especially in her later poetry, African American history becomes an important focus. A notable example is the powerful “But Since You Finally Asked,” which was written to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the slave memorial at Mount Vernon. The initial public readingof this poem at the Mount Vernon ceremony was accompanied by a deluge of rain, and to the participants gathered on the slope overlooking the Potomac River nature itself seemed to join in mourning the “many thousand gone.” Giovanni’s poem recounts the history of African people brought to America in chains, who were never “asked…what we thought of Jamestown,” never told “‘Welcome’…‘You’re Home’.” The poem juxtaposes the ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution to the realities of life for Black Americans, the only Americans, the poem suggests, who have actually believed in and tried to practice those ideals—which were never intended to include them. Brutally enslaved, denied their humanity, erased from history, Black Americans “didn’t write a constitution…we live one.” Echoing words from the Negro National Anthem (“Lift Every Voice and Sing”), Giovanni concludes the poem with a celebration of the courage, integrity, and generosity of her people.
    This poem makes clear why Nikki Giovanni continues to be so well loved: she is the definitive “poet of the people.” The significant body of work collected here will allow readers to follow her development as a poet and a thinker. More than anything, this collection dramatizes Giovanni’s dynamism, her refusal to continue journeying down familiar poetic paths, her commitment to growth and change. To borrow from her own words in “Stardate,” we might well say that this is not just a collection of poems but “a celebration of the road we have traveled…[and] a prayer…for the roads yet to come!”
    â€” VIRGINIA C. FOWLER
    July 1995

Chronology
    Â 1943  Born Yolande Cornelia Giovanni, Jr., on June 7 in Knoxville General Hospital, Knoxville, Tennessee, the daughter of Yolande Cornelia (1919–) and Jones “Gus” Giovanni (1914–82), and the sister of Gary Ann (1940–), aged two years, nine months. Knoxville is the home of Giovanni’s maternal grandparents, John Brown (1887–1962) and Emma Louvenia Watson (1898–1967). In August the family of four moves to Cincinnati, Ohio, home of her father, where her parents take jobs as houseparents at Glenview School, a home for Black boys. The children and their mother make frequent visits to their grandparents’ home in Knoxville throughout their childhood. At some point during Giovanni’s first three years, her sister—for reasons no one really understands—begins calling her Nikki.
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    Â 1947 The family leaves Glenview and moves briefly to Woodlawn, a suburb of Cincinnati. Giovanni’s father teaches at South Woodlawn School and works evenings and weekends at the YMCA. Because Woodlawn has no elementary school for Black children, Gary lives with her father’s half brother and his wife, Bill and Gladys Atkinson, in Columbus, Ohio, where she attends second grade.
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    Â 1948 The family moves to a house on Burns Avenue in nearby Wyoming, another suburb of Cincinnati. Giovanni begins kindergarten at Oak Avenue School, where her teacher is Mrs. Elizabeth Hicks; her sister enters third grade there.
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    Â 1949–52 Giovanni completes the first, second,