Analysis Of Suffering Mirrored By Nikky Finny

African-Americans’/ Affrilachians’ Suffering Mirrored: How do Nikky Finney’s “Red Velvet” and “Left” Capture events from the Past in order to Reshape the Present?

Abstract

Nikky Finney (1957- ) has always been involved in the struggle of southern black people interweaving the personal and the public in her depiction of social issues such as family, birth, death, sex, violence and relationships. Her poems cover a wide range of examples: a terrified woman on a roof, Rosa Parks, a Civil Rights symbol, and Condoleezza Rice, former Secretary of State, to name just a few. The dialogue is basic to this volume where historical allusions to prominent figures touch upon important sociopolitical issues. I argue that “Red Velvet” and “Left”, from

Poetry’s role is evaluated according to what extent it mirrors, shapes and is reshaped by historical events. In the mid-19th century, some critics viewed poetry as “an expression of the poet’s personality, a manifestation of the poet’s intuition and of the social and historical context which shaped him” ( Preminger, Warnke, Hardison 511). Analysis of the historical, social, political and cultural events at a certain time helps the reader fully grasp a given work. The historical approach is necessary in order for given allusions to be situated in their social, political and cultural background. In order to escape intentional fallacy, a poet should relate his work to universal

She gives examples of activist women such as Barbara Jordan, a black congresswoman and Lorraine Hansberry, a playwright. The metaphor goes on to liken the sharpening of wits to that of a pencil. “Finney, whose poetry covers issues of race, gender, and domestic abuse, sees art as a means to an end” (Newberry). She was influenced by the performance of Hansberry’s play To Be Gifted, Young and Black which was a presentation of her life. Finney maintains that “Something was handed over to me that night, something monumental and personal, something on the end of a pencil. That was the night that I started to figure and configure, contemplate, and computate just how I might leave my delible mark on this life” (Inquisitors and Insurgents). The pencil has been a life giving force, a fountain of life, a symbol of readiness and ability to write. Her professor and mentor Dr. Gloria Wade Gayles encouraged her to show her poems to Nikki Giovanni who corrected them with a red pen but assured Finney that something good was about to happen. She spent two years attending Toni Cade Bambara workshop with a pencil and paper. She stresses the metaphor of sharpened thought “The more I pencil-dig down,