Nikki Giovanni Essay

Nikki Giovanni’s Life as A Poet

Nikki Giovanni is a successful poet and received many awards for her unique poetry and hard work, she also did well in school and graduated with honors. She began to be known in the late 1960’s as one of the strongest voices in the Black Arts Movement. Giovanni did also have had some struggles during her life time such as cancer, and her mother drinking beer every day. Giovanni’s poetry is based on pride in her race and her people, she respects the famous African-American people of her time and writes a lot about her family.

“Giovanni is a prominent poet and writer who first caught the public’s attention as part of the Black Arts Movement in the late 1960’s” (www.biography.com). She was born on June

7th, 1943 in Tennessee. After she was born, her family moved to Ohio. Her father had many jobs during that time. Giovanni was very close to her grandmother even after she moved to Ohio. Giovanni did very well in school and she even graduated with honors. Her teachers wanted her to start doing poetry and writing. Whenever she got home from school, and she walked in her mother would be drinking beer, since she didn’t like that her mom was drinking she decided to do something about it and wrote a poem about it. There is a book that she wrote and in the book she mentioned about an event in her life that happened and it affected her it was when Hurricane Katrina hit and left a lot of damage on the town buildings and most importantly, the university library. Giovanni said that “I would have given anything to be able to just write a check for a million dollars to be able to rebuild it” (www.msnbc.com).
In 1968 Giovanni published her first book and a poem included in it was,” Black Talk”.

She had growing appreciation for her culture from her grandmother, she even says in an interview, “I came from a long line of story tellers” (www.poetryfoundation.org). The first books of poetry she published were inspired by assassinations of important people like Martin Luther King JR, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, and Robert Kennedy, and she wanted to respond to the event and wanted people to know about the horrible thing that happened which affected the African American culture. The first three books of poems she published were very successful and “answering a need for inspiration, anger, and solidarity in those who read them” (www.poetryfoundation.org). She stood up for the people who couldn’t stand up for themselves. One of her poems “Black Judgement” sold 6,000 copies in three months, which is more than 5 times the sales of any other poetry published. When she visited colleges around the world she was recognized as one of the most inspirational poets of her time. “Throughout the 1970s and 1980s Giovanni’s popularity as a speaker and lecturer increased along with her success as a poet and children’s author. She received numerous awards for her work, including honors from the National Council of Negro Women and the National Association of Radio and Television Announcers”

(www.poetryfoundation.org).
“A poem of friendship” is a poem written by Nikki Giovanni.

This is a poem explains what a real friendship is and what happiness is in a friendship. She explains the poem with symbols that a real true friendship is one with happiness, even though there can be bad times. In the second stanza, the lines 7 to 9 it has a symbol of happiness when it says “we are not friends because of the laughs we spend but the tears we save”. This part of the poem is saying that they are friends because of the good times and not because of the bad times. It is true that all friends do is laugh but laughing means that they are having fun which means there is happiness, friends also do cry which means they also fight. A relationship isn’t real if there are no fights or argument. In stanza 4 there are more examples of happiness when it says “I will never miss you because of what we do but what we are together”. This means that when friends are together they will be having fun, but it is more important on how they are acting to each other. A good friendship is one that you are happy when friends are with each other, not just being happy because of one thing that happened. In the first stanza Giovanni mentions lovers, she says that, “We are not lovers because of the love we make but the love we have”. Friends can also be lovers. There is love in every friendship because you love each other and would not do anything to hurt your friendship. In each stanza of the poem there are four lines and

it’s continuous throughout the whole poem. There is a lot of repetition used and alliteration. In every line of the poem the word “we” is used. The tone or attitude towards this poem is mainly positive because it’s about a real friendship and love. There is a shift in sentence structure in the poem, the first two stanza’s start with “We are not”, but the last two starts with a different sentence.
In conclusion, Nikki Giovanni is a successful poet, she is one of the famous poets from her culture who became famous in the 1960s and early 1970s. Her poetry is mostly about being proud of her culture and she honors her family and a lot of her poems are based on personal experiences. She is known for all her amazing work and her unique writing style of poetry. Her work is popular with adults and kids.