The Poem, Woman, by Nikki Giovanni

The poem “Woman”, written by Nikki Giovanni, uses several metaphors to describe the journey of a woman and what she feels the man should do but will not do. She describes in many different ways how she wants support from the man, but he is unwilling to give it.

In the first stanza, she starts the poem with the woman being a simple, insignificant thing. “She wanted to be a blade of grass amid the fields” (lines 1-2). Grass grows under your feet. Blades of grass are plentiful and ordinary. She just wanted to be just like every other woman. “But he wouldn’t agree to be her dandelion” (line 3-4). A dandelion is a deeply rooted weed. If it is pulled up by the roots, one has to get every single root up or the dandelion will grow back. This signifies that the woman wanted the man to be the solace in her life.

In the second stanza, the woman in the poem is now referring to herself as a robin. “She wanted to be a robin singing through the leaves” (lines 5-6). Robins mostly stay in their own climate during the winter, and feed off of the berries in the tree. When spring is coming the robin starts to sing. “But he refused to be her tree” (lines 7-8). She wanted the support when she needed, but she also wanted the freedom to fly away when she needed to. The tree signifies structure and stability. She needed that stability, but he did not want to give it.

In the third stanza, the woman has progressed into a spider. “She spun herself into a web and looking for a place to rest turned to him but he stood straight declining to be her corner” (lines 10-14). Spiders are normally very independent by nature. However a spider’s most desired place for a web would be a corner. A corner allows the spider a safe haven and many exit routs to esc...

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...endent, aggressive, and predatory. Then she tried to be a book, a great resource. In her final attempt to get a response from him, she turned herself into a bulb, his vital life source. However she was a woman the whole time.

The author could have been using metaphors to show what she thought were the characteristics of men and women. The poem more likely shows the progression of women over time to find their place in society and the man’s struggle to deal with it. The woman in the poem was desperately trying to find her place of significance. She learned in the end, that being who she was in other people’s eyes was less important than being who she was in her own eyes.

Work Cited

Giovanni, Nikki. “Woman”. Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing.7th ed. Edgar V. Roberts and Henry E. Jacobs. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2004. 1098.