Authors: Nikki Giovanni
The Journey:
The journey begins with the idea. It begins with a story. The journey is the step any writer takes to declare: I have something to say. I have a voice. I need to Use it. Since poetry is my vehicle on this journey, I chose to form my own publishing company and publish myself. I learned to set type, to bind, to cut. These skills are not necessary in the computer age, but they were then. Skills give us freedom. Freedom gives us wings.
The Inspiration:
I am a lover of history. It was Malcolm X who said: “Of all our endeavors, history is the most qualified to reward all research.” That may not be a totally accurate quote, but I remember being enchanted with heroes, with quests, with the search for the difficult and the unknown. Human beings are worthy of our interest. I continue to be fascinated by who we are and of which greatness we are capable.
The Back Story:
My latest book,
Bicycles,
evolved out of personal and professional sadness. A murder in the city in which I live and a massacre at the university at which I work formed the anchors of the book. But anchors are stationary and these two events kept spinning. It occurred to me that they were wheels. If that was the case then how could I connect them? Tragedy can only be calmed by love and laughter; I challenged myself to write love poems to connect the vents to the energy that was spinning. Once that journey was started, I realized if I put a handle on it I would have a Bicycle; hence my title. Love requires trust and balance. A perfect description of a bike.
The Buzz:
It is a pleasure to report
Bicycles
was well received.
The State of the Industry:
My very latest book is an anthology:
The 100* Best African American Poems (*but I cheated)
. I cheated because I wanted to put more than just the 100 historical poems. That would take me from Phillis Wheatley to the Black Arts movement and maybe, if I pushed it, to Tupac, but I felt my obligation was to do more. So we numbered the book 1 to 100 but we stuffed poems into duets, and suites, communities, even. The book has 221 poems in all and I am very proud of that. I believe our job as both writers and editors is to keep pushing the envelope.
There has never been a time when human beings did not create art. We tend to say the Caveman painted the walls but that would be illogical: He was out either hunting or protecting the front of the cave. Cave woman drew on those walls to leave a recordâsome . . . one . . . was here. We began with the Egyptians to see representations of humans and to see drawings that could easily be explained as prayers for a benign God.
People have also always sung . . . made noises that were either warning of danger or offering courtship. There will always be a need for song.
But there will also always be a need for physical representation. For paintings, now photographs, soon only digital and maybe something else yet unknown but not so far away.
Football is art. Almost a ballet. Reaching for the ball twirling down. Sprinting for the goal. Basketball is an art. Taking off midcourt and flying for a dunk. Black men made an art of walking. That thrust of hips, that
gangsta
lean. Folk saw that and wanted to throw their cars away.
Black people
are
a work of art. In the deepest throes of slavery we found a tone to build upon that became The Negro Spiritual. They laughed. Nobody, they said, wanted to hear it. But we sang on. Sang to Gospel to make it jazz to make it rhythm and blues to have it stolen as
rock
to make it Rap. The only sound, besides jazz, that is heard all over this planet. Black Americans are wonderful. They laughed at Duke Ellington: called it Jungle Music. They said Marian Anderson couldn't sing in the DAR building so she sang to the Heavens. They laughed at our poetry: said it was angry. They laughed at Rap: said it was dangerous.
They don't know what to make of the representational art today. It can be called Graffiti which in some eyes diminishes that art. No matter what they call it today, tomorrow they will call it
Genius
. Tomorrow they will teach classes about it; write books about it; give lectures on it. Folk will be awarded tenure for explaining why this line goes that way though of course only you and I know why. The artist felt it. The artist was true to herself; true to himself.
There would be those who say you cannot do what you do; you need to please the masses. But for those of us outside The Magic Circle, the masses we serve, our ancestors, our communities, our prayers for a fairer future . . . we are pleasing. Good for us. Good for everybody who has stayed true to ourselves.
Hip Hop Lives. And this art will live on as a testament to the beginning of the 21st Century. Alain Locke was correct when he said The Harlem Renaissance would define a great people because no people are great without great art. We are a great people.
I give
easily
because I have
easily
taken It's incredibly
difficult
to let people
give you what you need maybe
as difficult as
giving you what you want
interactions
with and between
humans can certainly be
complicated
People who live alone
Fart in cars
Pick their noses
Sleep naked
And never flush
In the middle of the night
Most people who live alone
Are compulsive
Things have to stay where
Things were put
People too
Like there is no room
In my heart for change
Or hamburger that I don't grind
Or coffee that drips
Or tears because
People who live alone
Soon learn
It is all
right
I don't think
There is
a      definition
    or
b      definition
    but only
the  definition
when it comes to who you R
but then I don't
Facebook    or
Twitter    or
YouTube    or
Ask anyone's permission
To fuck or not to fuck
That is not the question
To love or to be
Lonely:
No-brainer
Who you are
Is you
And no one can
Should
Or
Will
Touch
that
(for Big Nikky)
You said: My aunt owned
A building where she rented
Apartments
Like Macon Dead's tenants sometimes
They couldn't pay
Twice over the years the man
Upstairs gave paintings
Instead of money
He said: Will you take this
Will you take that
For my staying in
Your place here on earth
And she said: Yes
You said: I visited and loved
Them both
My aunt told me the story of the paintings
They are extraordinary, I said to her
She said: Take them. I want you to have them
You carried these paintings
From coast to coast South to less South
To the walls of a warm and comforting home
You said to me: Do you know the painter
Do you know what they are now worth
If I had known their worth I would have
Should have given her something
For them
I said: You Did
You love her You love the paintings
If that's not something
Then I know nothing
At 2:30 or maybe 3:00
A.M.
I have tossed
And turned all I can:
I'm thirsty
But if I get up to drink I'll have to
Get up again
To go to the bathroom
Thirst wins
Stumbling into my house
Shoes
I go to the kitchen
To find the lemonade
My mother
Were she still here
Would complain:
You don't drink enough water.
Adam's Ale is the best thing
But I don't like water
I, like most Americans,
Take my water
With sugar or fruit juices
Or any disguise I can find
Leaning over the sink
With a bit of real lemonade dripping down
My chin
I feel the coolness
Float into my lungs
And that blessed relief
That says Thirst
Has been satisfied
Feeling myself once again in bloom
I smile
Return to my bed
And await my next
          Adventure.
On a foggy night
With that sort of misty rain
That is wonderful for sleeping
But nothing at all for driving
I traveled home
From a great dinner party
We were all so jolly
Driving my ninety-year-old aunt
Who was visiting from out of town
We were catching up on family
And arguing politics
I turned up our mountain
Just as I admonished her:
But The President hasn't done anything
About jobs
When something said:
You are going too fast
It may have been the wine that evening
But I have to confess:
I speed a lot
So I heeded the voice
My eyes always sweep the Trail
Leading to my home
From Side to Side
There is always a cat
Or raccoon seldom a coyote and at this hour of
night the turtles
And snakes are in bed
My aunt asked:
Why
Are you hitting your brakes
When a beautiful white strip
Surrounded by shiny black fur
With fear in her eyes
Got caught in my headlights
And stopped
I stopped too
And waited.
She continued her journey across the trail
And I hope
Home to her babies
We need to watch
For the scared and the vulnerable
One day it may be
Us
The author gratefully acknowledges the following publications in which poems in
Chasing Utopia
first appeared, sometimes in slightly different form:
“Chasing Utopia”:
Poetry Magazine
“Spices,” “The International Open,” and “It's Just Love”:
Appalachian Heritage
“Icarus”:
Icarus
:
The Wyoming High School Magazine
“When God Made Mountains”:
The Knoxville Journal
“These Women”:
Tiferet Journal
“Poets”:
Cultural Weekly
“In Defense of Flowers”:
The Roanoke Times
“Exercise”:
Cerise Press
“I Wish I Could Live (in a Book)”:
What You Wish For: A Book for Darfur
“Don Pullen”:
The Jefferson Center Tribute to Don Pullen
“When My Phone Trembles” and “The Scared and the Vulnerable”:
Prairie Schooner
“Note to the South: You Lost,” previously published as “The Lost Cause Lost”:
Lines in a Long Array
:
A Civil War Commemoration: Poems and Photographs, Past and Present
“Our Job Safety Is Your Priority with Coffee”:
The Atlantic
NIKKI GIOVANNI, poet, activist, mother, and professor, is a seven-time NAACP Image Award winner and the first recipient of the Rosa Parks Woman of Courage Award, and holds the Langston Hughes Medal for Outstanding Poetry, among many other honors. The author of twenty-eight books and a Grammy nominee for
The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection,
she is the University Distinguished Professor of English at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia.
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POETRY
Black Feeling Black Talk / Black Judgement
Re: Creation
My House
The Women and the Men
Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day
Those Who Ride the Night Winds
The Selected Poems of Nikki Giovanni
Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea: Poems and Not Quite Poems
The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni
PROSE
Gemini: An Extended Autobiographical Statement on My First Twenty-Five Years of Being a Black Poet
A Dialogue: James Baldwin and Nikki Giovanni
A Poetic Equation: Conversations Between Nikki Giovanni and Margaret Walker
Sacred Cows . . . and Other Edibles
Racism 101
EDITED BY NIKKI GIOVANNI
Night Comes Softly: An Anthology of Black Female Voices
Appalachian Elders: A Warm Hearth Sampler
Grand Mothers: Poems, Reminiscences, and Short Stories About the Keepers of Our Traditions
Grand Fathers: Reminiscences, Poems, Recipes, and Photos of the Keepers of Our Traditions
Shimmy Shimmy Shimmy Like My Sister Kate: Looking at the Harlem Renaissance Through Poems
FOR CHILDREN
Spin a Soft Black Song
Vacation Time: Poems for Children
Knoxville, Tennessee
The Genie in the Jar
The Sun Is So Quiet
Ego-Tripping and Other Poems for Young People
The Grasshopper's Song: An Aesop's Fable Revisited
Rosa
Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass: An American Friendship
Hip Hop Speaks to Children