Poems

Nikki-Rosa

The poem is titled as “Nikki-Rosa” by Nikki Giovanni describes specific moments from her childhood. Her upbringing was poor. The images she recalls are more than biographical details; the evidence to support her premise that growing up black doesn't always mean growing up in hardship. Although Nikki Giovanni's reputation as a revolutionary poet is based upon this work, fewer than half of its poems address the theme of revolution (www.poetyfoundation.org). Critics point to often quoted incendiary poems in this collection to indicate Giovanni's revolutionary stance. They also note the poems about political figures and poems addressing black identity to illustrate Giovanni's militancy. These poems are important in this volume, but they are not Giovanni's sole concern. The poem “Nikki-Rosa,” void of any punctuation, appears as one long thought. The memories of childhood are jumbled together, much the way someone would remember his or her youth. This seemingly formless nature of the poem thus mimics the thought processes of the narrator. The particular events merge, leaving the feel of a happy childhood that presumably would elude the biographer or critic.

Nikki Giovanni's poems, including “Nikki-Rosa,” are accessible to a wide and diverse audience primarily because the images are drawn from everyday life and the language is simple and direct. This accessibility has made her a very popular poet; her public readings have large audiences and her books and sound recordings enjoy good sales. In “Nikki-Rosa,” as well as in many other of Giovanni's poems, the commonplace images are taken specifically from a working-class setting. The narrator describes family meetings, birthdays, and a large tub used for bathing. Thus the poem presents a realistic portrayal of day-to-day family life.

Rooted in an oral tradition, Giovanni in “Nikki-Rosa” combines ordinary language with the natural rhythms of speech. She avoids dense vocabulary and obscure symbols and allusions, relying instead on simple words, a conversational tone, and the clarity of the lines to convey her meaning.

What has been overlooked are the highly personal poems. In tallying the themes that appear in this work, it becomes apparent that love, loss, and loneliness are important to Giovanni. She also writes personal tributes and reminiscences to those who helped shape her life and ideology. In Nikki Rosa, then, is a compilation of political and personal poetry. Amid calls for revolution and affirmations of blackness are an insistence on maintaining one's individuality in the face of the political. There is also the importance of acknowledging the contributions of others in one's development. Thus, what is central to Giovanni's revolution is helping people to think about new ways of viewing and understanding their lives, personally and politically. Black Feeling, Black Talk is not a call for revolution that will destroy the world (www.poetyfoundation.org). The book is about how people, in the words of its final poem, may “build what we can become when we dream.”

The speaker disproves society's assumptions that poverty begets unhappiness when she states that she wanted her life to be rich with memories and love, neither which can be purchased ...