This poem, in which a Black poet salutes a Black singer, seems like the perfect note (as it were) on which to conclude this pick of the best Nikki Giovanni poems.Poet Nikki Giovanni grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Knoxville, Tennessee. It emerges that the ‘lady’ whose voice is being complimented in the poem’s title is Nina Simone, the great African-American singer. This 1996 poem contains possibly the best comeback whenever someone is accused of being ‘full of themselves’: it’s the payoff to a poem which takes the form of a dialogue between a man, who is putting down a Black woman, and the Black woman who responds, first with traditional biblical phrases drawn from the Book of Genesis, and then with more idiosyncratic ripostes. This poem is about a woman who prefers to solve her depression and anxiety (she lives constantly ‘on the edge of an emotional abyss’) by doing something ‘concrete’ and practical rather than dealing in ‘abstracts’.ġ0. Kennedy (1925-68) was well-known for advocating for civil rights during the 1960s, and when he was assassinated in 1968, Giovanni wrote this short poem in which Kennedy is likened to a tree that has been chopped down by thoughtless people who cannot contemplate the ‘beauty’ which the tree provides for others. ‘ A Poem on the Assassination of Robert F. The title of this 1968 poem is a clever pun: the speaker imagines themselves as a godlike being capable of building the Great Sphinx at Giza and drinking nectar with another god, but there’s a suggestion that their ‘ego trip’ is the result of some sort of drug-induced high.Īnd ‘high’ is indeed the word when the poem finally comes down to earth with a rather bathetic, familiar simile in the final stanza, as Giovanni deliberately brings her grandiose speaker back down to our level …Ĩ.

‘ Ego Tripping (there may be a reason why)’.

That quilt will then keep a child or a lonely old person warm. Starting with this simple simile, Giovanni then develops the metaphor, with her speaking expressing the wish that part of her will survive after she has ceased to be, like a square cut out of the tablecloth and woven into a quilt.

This is a poem about failure, or at least perceived failure, in life: the speaker likens herself to a faded and worn-out tablecloth, which can no longer cover the table where families gather to eat together.

Rosa parks by nikki giovanni