Analysis Of Fish Out Of Water By Nikki Giovanni

Literary Analysis: Nikki Giovanni By: Lalah Turner Nikki Giovanni is a very expressive poet. Her writing is complex and sometimes hard to understand at first. She uses words to help her readers picture what she is saying. I think she does a great job of helping you get her point. I read several of Nikki Giovanni’s poems. I decided to analyze three of them. I chose ‘Poetry”, “I Am Glass’, and ”Fish Out of Water.” I found these three to be fantastic examples of Giovanni’s use of figurative and specific language, imagery, and vivid world. It seems to me that her poems almost come alive and force you to put yourself inside.

I found similes, metaphors, and personification. She explains that poetry can be anything. Using similes such as “Graceful as a fawn, gentle like a teardrop, and strong like the eye.” She expresses that a poet finds it so important to create that they often shut out their own lives in order to write. The metaphor “poetry is pure energy” is used to state how powerful it can be. Giovanni is basically saying in this poem that if you don’t get poetry then something is wrong with you because it is just life that the writer wants you to understand. In the poem “I Am Glass” Giovanni uses glass to explain that people are weak and more than just what they have been through. The use of figurative language such as the metaphor ”I am glass” is used to explain that people are fragile and hurt by small things. Yet they change and adapt to the situation. Giovanni say “if you blow your breathe on me I can fog, then you can write your name,claim me.” My feeling is that she is the glass and there to be claimed by love “until the sun shines.” Which means until the love is no longer