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Top Comments: Nikki Giovanni [1]

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Date: 2024-12-11  

Nikki Giovanni, one of the greatest American poets of all time, died this week at the age of 81. She wrote about racism, sexism, poverty — and some of the most amazing love poems ever written.

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Here’s a snippet of her love poem That Day, definitely meant to be read aloud to your lover:

you get the glass

i've got the wine

we'll do what we did

when we did it overtime if you've got the dough

then i've got the heat

we can use my oven

til it's warm and sweet

This is from her Ego Tripping (there may be a reason why):

I sowed diamonds in my back yard

My bowels deliver uranium

the filings from my fingernails are

semi-precious jewels

On a trip north

I caught a cold and blew

My nose giving oil to the arab world

I am so hip even my errors are correct

I sailed west to reach east and had to round off

the earth as I went

While “Nikki-Rosa” was her best known poem, she has this to say in her poem “When I Die:”

please don’t let them read “nikki-rosa” maybe just let

some black woman who called herself my friend go around

and collect

each and every book and let some black man who said it was

negative of me to want him to be a man collect every picture

and poster and let them burn -throw acid on them- shit

on them as

they did me while i tried

to live

I’ll end with the final lines of Poem for a Lady Whose Voice I Like:

and he said: you pretty full of yourself ain’t chu so she replied: show me someone not full of herself and i’ll show you a hungry person

On to Top Comments!

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Top mojo, courtesy of mik:

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