one ounce of truth benefits, 173
on my bedroom wall hang a poster, 160
on the bite of a kola nut, 176
on the road to damascus, 115
Planes fly patterns, 345
poetry is a tressel, 210
poetry is motion graceful, 221
rain is, 100
Scarcity in oil and gas, 287
scared?, 47
she didn’t like to think in abstracts, 230
she often wondered why people spoke, 288
she realized, 258
she wanted to be a blade, 275
so he said: you ain’t got no talent, 135
So I met this man, 9
some small island birthed, 116
sometimes, 132
sometimes i feel like i just get in, 57
sometimes you hear a question like “what is, 165
somewhere there was a piano playing, 247
take a note and spin it around spin it around don’t, 110
The art of Charles White is like making love, 316
the birds flew south, 209
The Black Revolution is passing you bye, 23
The drums, 318
the eye we are told, 271
The face in the window, 310
the f.b.i. came by my house three weeks ago, 185
The first poem, 299
the heat, 99
the last time i was home, 144
The laws of science teach us a pound of gold weighs as, 211
the moon shines down, 293
the mother palm had plaited her daughter’s, 92
there are no reservations, 94
there are sounds, 281
there is a hunger, 163
There is always something, 260
There is an old story, 327
There is nothing, 322
there is something, 213
There were fields where once we walked, 10
the white man is, 123
the white man sent me, 130
The whole point of writing you is pointless, 27
the women gather, 197
the world is not a pleasant place, 153
they ain’t gonna never get, 118
they clapped when we landed, 179
They had a rebellion in Washington this year, 52
they tell me that i’m beautiful i know, 154
thinning hair, 181
This is not a poem, 358
those things, 155
though I do wonder, 278
to tommy who:, 91
Trees are never felled, 319
Vowels, 341
walking down park, 107
we all start, 97
we are all imprisoned in the castle of our skins, 175
We are like a field, 344
We are not lovers, 291
we make up our faces, 282
We met in, 8
we stood there waiting, 191
we tend to fear old age, 250
We went there to confer, 3
What can I, a poor Black woman, do to destroy America? This, 49
What would a little girl think, 313
when all the cards are in, 113
when i die i hope no one who ever hurt me cries, 171
when i nap, 159
when i was very little, 146
When I write I like to write, 347
when she was little, 131
Where are your heroes, my little Black ones, 45
While it is true, 16
Wilmington is a funni Negro, 24
“yeah” she said “my man’s gone too, 149
You, 88
You never know, 330
you say i’m as cold, 290
You see, 361
you see, my whole life, 71
You see boy, 58
you’ve just got to dig sly, 68
You were gone, 346
About the Author
NIKKI GIOVANNI is a three-time NAACP Image Award winner, the first recipient of the Rosa Parks Woman of Courage Award, and holds the Langston Hughes Medal for Outstanding Poetry. She is the author of twenty-seven books, and she is an Oprah Legend and a University Distinguished Professor of English at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia.
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Also by Nikki Giovanni
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
Love Poems
Blues: For All the Changes
Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea
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: Anthology of Black Female Voices
Appalachian Elders: A Warmth 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
Copyright
THE COLLECTED POETRY OF NIKKI GIOVANNI. Compilation Copyright © 2003 by Nikki Giovanni. Previously published material copyright © 1968, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1974, 1975, 1978, 1979, 1983, 1995, 1996 by Nikki Giovanni. Chronology and notes copyright © 2003 by Virginia C. Fowler. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub © Edition NOVEMBER 2008 ISBN: 9780061977664
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1Sacred Cows…and Other Edibles (New York: William Morrow, 1988), p. 61; hereafter cited in text.
2Amiri Baraka, “Foreword: The Wailer,” in Visions of a Liberated Future: Black Arts Movement Wri
tings by Larry Neal, ed. Michael Schwartz (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1989), p. x.
3Arlene Elder, “A MELUS Interview: Nikki Giovanni,” MELUS 9 (Winter 1982): 61–75; reprinted in Conversations with Nikki Giovanni, ed. Virginia C. Fowler (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1992), p. 126.
4Ibid., p. 128.
5Claudia Tate, Black Women Writers At Work (New York: Continuum, 1983); reprinted in Fowler, Conversations with Nikki Giovanni, p. 146.
6Nikki Giovanni, Gemini: An Extended Autobiographical Statement on My First Twenty-Five Years of Being a Black Poet (1971; reprint, New York: Penguin, 1985), p. 95.
7Virginia C. Fowler, “An Interview with Nikki Giovanni” in Fowler, Conversations with Nikki Giovanni, p. 202.
8Barbara Reynolds, And Still We Rise: Interviews with 50 Black Role Models (Washington: Gannet New Media Services, 1988), p. 94.
The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni Page 31