Nikki Giovanni
Photograph: Mari Evans

NIKKI GIOVANNI is the author of thirteen books of poetry including Love Poems, for which she recieved an NAACP Image Award, and The Selected Poems of Nikki Giovanni.   Giovanni holds the Langston Hughes Medal for Outstanding Poetry and has been names woman of the year by Mademoiselle, Ladies' Home Journal, and Essence.  A gardener and consummate lover of the blues, Giovanni is a professor of English at Virginia Polytechnic.
(Bio. excerpted form inside back cover of Blues for All The Changes)


Amazon.com's Significant Seven
Nikki Giovanni graciously agreed to answer the questions we like to ask every author: the Amazon.com Significant Seven.
 

Q: What book has had the most significant impact on your life?

A: No single book. The poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar, Langston Hughes, and Gwendolyn Brooks was an impact, however.

Q: You are stranded on a desert island with only one book, one CD, and one DVD--what are they?

A: Sula by Toni Morrison, Great American Spirituals, and The Godfather.

Q: What is the worst lie you've ever told?

A: "You're the best."

Q: Describe the perfect writing environment.

A: A cup of coffee, my rocking chair, the sun just rising through my left window.

Q: If you could write your own epitaph, what would it say?

A: "I tried."

Q: Who is the one person living or dead that you would like to have dinner with?

A: Lorraine Hansberry

Q: If you could have one superpower, what would it be?

A: I would fly.

 

bicyclesBicycles: Love Poems
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Paperback: 128 pages
Publisher: Harper Perennial; 1 edition (February 2, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0061726494
ISBN-13: 978-0061726491
Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches

Winner 2010 NAACP Image Award

In a career that has earned her accolades, honorary degrees, and awards from both fellow poets and everyday poetry lovers, Nikki Giovanni has established herself as a writer who can entertain and challenge, inform and inspire. Sometimes controversial, sometimes ethereal, but always beautiful, her poems move readers of all hues and generations.

With Bicycles, she's collected poems that serve as a companion to her 1997 Love Poems. An instant classic, that book'romantic, bold, and erotic'expressed notions of love in ways that were delightfully unexpected. In the years that followed, Giovanni experienced losses both public and private: a mother's passing, a sister's too, and a massacre on the campus where she teaches. Yet just when it seemed life was spinning out of control, Giovanni rediscovered love'what she calls the antidote. Here romantic love'and all its manifestations, the physical touch, the emotional pull, the hungry heart'is distilled as never before by one of our most talented poets.

 

On My Journey Now: Looking at African-American History Through the Spirituals
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Reading level: Young Adult
Paperback: 128 pages
Publisher: Candlewick; Reprint edition (September 8, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0763643807
ISBN-13: 978-0763643805
Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.4 inches

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"The intimate, unpretentious talk about familiar songs will grab readers, who will want to find out more about the inspiring history." ' BOOKLIST (starred review)

Ever since she was a little girl attending three different churches, poet Nikki Giovanni has loved the spirituals. Now, with the passion of a poet and the knowledge of a historian, she paints compelling portraits of the lives of her ancestors through the words of songs such as "Go Down, Moses" and "Ain't Got Time to Die," celebrating a people who overcame enslavement and found a way to survive, to worship, and to build.

 

Hip Hop Speaks to Children with CD: A Celebration of Poetry with a Beat
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Reading level: Ages 9-12
Hardcover: 80 pages
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky; Har/Com edition (October 1, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1402210485
ISBN-13: 978-1402210488
Product Dimensions: 10.6 x 9.7 x 0.6 inches

NOW A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND INCLUDED IN THE BOOKLIST TOP 10 ART BOOKS FOR YOUTH!

Our consensus is Hip Hop Speaks to Children is the most essential poetry purchase to make this year.
The poetry is enough.
The illustrations are enough.
The CD is enough.
Together, this book is a treasure of which you cannot get enough.
We shall accomplish much this year. Children will be encouraged to put their words to poetry and beats. Teachers will be encouraged to allow the artists to speak to children.
'Diane Chen, School Library Journal blog "Practically Paradise"

Hip Hop Speaks to Children is a celebration of poetry with a beat.

Poetry can have both a rhyme and a rhythm. Sometimes it is obvious; sometimes it is hidden. But either way, make no mistake, poetry is as vibrant and exciting as it gets. And when you find yourself clapping your hands or tapping your feet, you know you've found poetry with a beat!

Like Poetry Speaks to Children, the New York Times Bestselling classic poetry book and CD that started it all, Hip Hop Speaks to Children is meant to be the beginning of a journey of discovery.

READ more than 50 remarkable poems and songs!

HEAR poetry's rhymes and rhythms from Queen Latifah to Gwendolyn Brooks, Langston Hughes to A Tribe Called Quest and more! * Also hear part of Martin Luther Kind's original "I Have a Dream" speech, followed by the remarkable live performance of the speech by Nikki Giovanni, Oni Lasana and Val Gray Ward. * The Hip Hop Speaks to Children CD contains more than 30 performances, either by the artists who created them, or as unique interpretations by admiring poets and artists.

DISCOVER Langston Hughes's elegant gospel "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," A Tribe Called Quest's playful "Ham 'N' Eggs," Sterling A. Brown's hard-luck "Long Track Blues," Gwendolyn Brooks's wake-up call "We Real Cool," Kanye West's lovely "Hey Mama," and Martin Luther King Jr.'s awe-inspiring "I Have a Dream."

This is a collection of rhymes and rhythms unlike any other poetry book!

Celebrate with remarkable poets, including: Eloise Greenfield, Mos Def, Lucille Clifton, Oscar Brown Jr., Tupac Shakur, Maya Angelou, Queen Latifah, Nikki Grimes, Walter Dean, Myers, Common, and, of course, Nikki Giovanni

 

Acolytes: Poems
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Hardcover: 144 pages
Publisher: William Morrow; 1 edition (January 23, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0061231312

A collection of eighty all new poems, ACOLYTES is distinctly Nikki Giovanni, but different. Not softened, but more inspired by love, celebration, memories and even nostalgia. She aims her intimate and sparing words at family and friends, the deaths of heroes and friends, favorite meals and candy, nature, libraries, and theatre. But in between, the deep and edgy conscience that has defined her for decades shines through when she writes about Rosa Parks, hurricane Katrina, and Emmett Till's disappearance, leaving no doubt that Nikki has not traded one approach for another, but simply made room for both.

 

Rosa
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by Nikki Giovanni, illustrated by Bryan Collier

Reading level: Ages 4-8

Hardcover: 40 pages
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR) (September 15, 2005)
ISBN-10: 0439898838
Product Dimensions: 11 x 8.4 x 0.7 inches

Coretta Scott King Author Honor Books

Rosa Parks's personal story moves quickly into a summary of the Civil Rights movement in this striking picture book. Parks is introduced in idealized terms. She cares for her ill mother and is married to one of the best barbers in the county. Sewing in an alterations department, Rosa Parks was the best seamstress. Her needle and thread flew through her hands like the gold spinning from Rumpelstiltskin's loom. Soon the story moves to her famous refusal to give up her seat on the bus, but readers lose sight of her as she waits to be arrested. Giovanni turns to explaining the response of the Women's Political Caucus, which led to the bus boycott in Montgomery. A few events of the movement are interjected'the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, the aftermath and reactions to the murder of Emmett Till, the role of Martin Luther King, Jr., as spokesperson. Collier's watercolor and collage scenes are deeply hued and luminous, incorporating abstract and surreal elements along with the realistic figures. Set on colored pages, these illustrations include an effective double foldout page with the crowd of successful walkers facing a courthouse representing the 1956 Supreme Court verdict against segregation on the buses. Many readers will wonder how it all went for Parks after her arrest, and there are no added notes. Purposeful in its telling, this is a handsome and thought-provoking introduction to these watershed acts of civil disobedience.'Margaret Bush, Simmons College, Boston  Copyright ' Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

 

The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni
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ISBN: 0060541334
Format: Hardcover, 496pp
Pub. Date: November 2003
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

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The first of its kind, this omnibus collection covers Nikki Giovanni's complete work of poetry from three decades, 1968-1998. The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni contains Giovanni's first seven volumes of poetry: Black Feeling Black Talk, Black Judgment, Re: Creation, My House, The Women and the Men, Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day, and Those Who Ride the Night Winds. Arranged chronologically with a biographical timeline and introduction, a new afterword from the author, title and first-line indexes, and extensive notes to the poems, this collection is the testimony of a life's work - from one of America's most beloved daughters and powerful poets.

 

Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea: Poems and Not Quite Poems
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ISBN: 0060099526
Format: Hardcover, 128pp
Pub. Date: October 2002
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Edition Description: 1ST

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When Nikki Giovanni's poems first emerged during the Civil Rights and Black Arts Movements of the 1960s, she immediately took a place among the most celebrated and influential poets of the era. Now, Giovanni continues to stand as one of the most commanding, luminous voices to grace America's political and poetic landscape.

In a career spanning over thirty years, Giovanni has created a body of work that's become vital and essential to our American consciousness. This collection of new poems is a masterpiece that explores the ecstatic union between self and community. Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea is an extraordinarily intimate collection. Each poem bears our revered cultural icon's trademark of the unfalteringly political and the intensely personal: The elegant "What We Miss" exalts the might and grace of women, while "Swinging on a Rainbow" rejoices about the spaces in which we read; Giovanni commemorates Africa and her family legacy in the majestic "Symphony of the Sphinx" and contemplates our America in the heartbreaking "Desperate Acts" and "9:11:01 He Blew It." And in the dreamy "Making James Baldwin" and dazzling "Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea," Giovanni gives us reason to comfort, to share, to love, to change and to be human.

Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea is Nikki Giovanni's meditation on humanity and soul. It's her revelatory gaze at the world in which we live -- and her confession on the world she dreams we will one day call home. Nikki Giovanni is a national treasure as she once again confirms her place as one of America's most powerful truth tellers and beloved daughters.

 

The African American Audio Experience
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Format: Compact Disc - Abridged, 5 CDs
ISBN: 006053527X
Pub. Date: January 2003
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

The leading voices of African-American letters come together in this essential collection of poems, prose and theater performance.

One of the most significant occurrences in America during the 20th century was the rise of African-American writers to the forefront of literature. Documenting their views on American culture and its tragic and glorious history, African-American writers' contributions reflected their struggle for equality and paved the way into a brighter future for their country. This collection includes selections of some of the best of those works, with an original introduction by Nikki Giovanni:

Black Boy by Richard Wright. A classic of American autobiography, this subtly crafted narrative chronicles one man's coming of age in the Jim Crow South. Performed by Brock Peters.

A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry. An emotionally lacerating landmark of American theater, Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun is presented here with a full cast performance starring Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis.

Excerpts from The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection. A collection of poems from one of the most commanding voices to grace America's political and poetic landscape. Read by the author.

Excerpts from the "Tall Tales" Chapter of Every Tounge Got to Confess by Zora Neale Hurston. Collected in the 1920s, these stories pay tribute to the richness of Black vernacular and reflect -- with wit, wisdom, compassion, and style -- the sorrows and joys of the African-American heritage. Performed by Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis.

Excerpts from Langston Hughes Reads. Arare and exceptional recording on one of the greatest American poets of the 20th century.

Three poems by Gwendolyn Brooks. "We Real Cool," "Malcolm X," and "The Sermon on the Warpland." Performed by Ruby Dee.

 

Blues for all ChangesBlues: For All the Changes: New Poems
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ISBN: 0688156983
Format: Hardcover, 100pp
Pub. Date: April 1999
Publisher: Morrow,William & Co

 

Intimate, edgy, and unapologetic, Blues: For All the Changes bears the mark of Nikki Giovanni's unmistakable voice. In a career that has spanned three decades, Giovanni has created an indispensable body of work and earned a place among the nation's most celebrated and controversial poets. From the environment to our reliance on manners, from sex and politics to love among Black folk, Blues is a master-work with poems for every soul and every mood: The poignant "Stealing Home" pays tribute to Jackie Robinson, while "Road Rage Blues" jams on time and space: Giovanni celebrates love's absolute power in "Train Rides" and laments life's transience in "Me and Mrs. Robin." With the tenderness that has made her one of our most accessible and beloved poets, Giovanni evokes a world that is not only just but also happy.

 

Love PoemsLove Poems
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ISBN: 0688149898
Format: Hardcover, 96pp
Pub. Date: January 1997
Publisher: Morrow,William & Co

 

Giovanni received an NAACP Image Award for this title!

In a career that has spanned more than a quarter century, Nikki Giovanni has earned the reputation as one of America's most celebrated and contoversial writers. Now, she presents a stunning collection of love poems that includes more than twenty new works.

From the revolutionary "Seduction" to the tender new poem, "Just a Simple Declaration of Love," from the whimsical "I Wrote a Good Omelet" to the elegiac "All Eyez on U," written for Tupac Shakur, these poems embody the fearless passion and spirited wit for which Nikki Giovanni is beloved and revered.

Romantic, bold, and erotic, Love Poems expresses notions of love in ways that are delightfully unexpected. Articulating in sensuous verse what we know only instinctively, Nikki Giovanni once again confirms her place as one of our nations's most distinguished poets and powerful truth-tellers.In a career that has spanned more than a quarter century, starting with her explosive early years in the Black Rights Movement, Nikki Giovanni has earned a reputation as one of America's most celebrated and controversial writers. Her mind-speaking work has made her a universal favorite and a number-one best-seller.The love poems-the revolutionary "Seduction," the whimsical "I Wrote a Good Omelet," and the tender "My House" to name just a few-are among the most beloved of all Nikki Giovanni's works. Now, Love Poems brings together these and other favorites with over twenty new poems. Romantic, bold, and erotic, Love Poems will once again confirm Nikki Giovanni's place among the country's most renowned poets and truth tellers.

 

Age Ain't Nothing but a Number: Black Women Explore Midlife
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Carleen Brice Editor & Contributor

ISBN: 0807028231
Number Of Pages: 252
Publication Date: May 15, 2003
Publisher: Beacon Press

"Age Ain't Nothing but a Number is my roadmap." --Iyanla Vanzant

Forty-five black women writers "known and new" discuss midlife in the first anthology of its kind.

Finally, a collection that celebrates, considers, contemplates, even criticizes "midlife" from a black woman's point of view. Age Ain't Nothing but a Number ranges over every aspect of black women's lives: personal growth, family and friendship, love and sexuality, health, beauty, illness, spirituality, creativity, financial independence, work, and scores of other topics.

Midlife today isn't your grandmother's "change of life." Today, black women call hot flashes "power surges," and menopause, the "pause that refreshes." These days, middle-aged women may be newlyweds or new mothers, as well as grandmothers or widows. They may experience the empty-nest syndrome and then the "return-to-the-nest syndrome" as adult children move back home. They may navigate the field of Internet dating, travel the world, teach homeless women, take up pottery, or study international business.

This anthology captures all of these aspects of midlife as experienced by some of the finest voices in African-American writing today. Featuring the work of Maya Angelou, J. California Cooper, Pearl Cleage, Nikki Giovanni, Susan L. Taylor, Alice Walker, and dozens of others, Age Ain't Nothing but a Number will make readers think, laugh, and cry and will be the perfect gift book for spring.

 

Grand MothersGrand Mothers: Poems, Reminiscences, and Short Stories about the Keepers of Our Traditions
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Reading level: Young Adult
Paperback: 168 pages
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR) (September 15, 1996)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0805049037

Such women as Gwendolyn Brooks, Mary Elizabeth King, Gloria Naylor, and Kyoko Mori celebrate the unique roles of grandmothers.

Review from BookList :
This anthology brings together writings about grandmothers. As Giovanni notes in her exceptionally readable introduction, "This is not a balanced book. We are mostly Southern, pan Asian, and black." All but one of the writers are women. Still, the diversity of ages, experiences, sentiments, and voices gives the book variety of style and viewpoint within its 27 stories, memories, and poems. Though the topic of grandmothers might be expected to bring out a certain sentimentality, the writers cut through the cliches to the basic human needs that grandmothers fill and the fundamental questions their lives and their memories raise in those who know them, remember them, or pass down their stories. Varied in quality, but still a unique collection of writings. -Carolyn Phelan

 

genie.bmp (13778 bytes)The Genie in the Jar
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Reading level: Ages 4-8
Paperback: 32 pages
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR) (December 16, 1998)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0805060766

Nikki Giovanni's evocative, lyrical poem spins words of freedom, but warns against the pain it can bring. She weaves a glowing fabric on the black loom of language, colored with hopes and dreams. With hints of jazz and folktales and nursery rhymes, The Genie in the Jar is also a simple story of love. With illustrations by Chris Raschka, this poetic evocation of love and pride is as deep as the human heart. Full color.

Review or The Genie in the Jar from Kirkus :
A poem by Giovanni (Knoxville, Tennessee, 1994, etc.) for the singer Nina Simone becomes a luscious illustrated work with Raschka's watercolor, ink, and oil stick figures. Readers don't need to know anything about Simone to hear this book sing. ``Take a note and spin it around . . . don't prick your finger . . . take a note and spin it around on the Black loom . . . Take a genie and put her in a jar, wrap the sky around her.'' The vocabulary is simple, and fairly dances with images as Giovanni weaves her story of music and heart. The figures--a small girl, her mother, and a circle of women--swoop and curve like musical notes. The textured Fabriano paper backgrounds make the art seem to pop off the page; the colors are rich and warm, in shades of tea, chocolate, malt, cappucino, and butter, with a vibrant azure cloud. As is true of good poetry, this piece begs to be read aloud; as is true of fine art, it repays repeated examination. In the comforting rhythm of these pages, children will absorb a message of faith in the power of art leavened by love.

 

Ego-Tripping & Other Poems for Young People
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Paperback: 76 pages
Publisher: Lawrence Hill Books; Revised edition (November 1, 1993)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1556521898
ISBN-13: 978-1556521898

Twenty years after the release of the first edition of this bestseller, poet Nikki Giovanni has added 10 new poems to the 22 that made up the original collection. Powerfully illustrated by George Ford, Ego-Tripping captures the essence of the African-American experience in ways that have special relevance and appeal for adolescents.

Review of Ego-Tripping from BookList :
younger for reading aloud. Giovanni has added 10 new poems to her acclaimed 1973 collection of 23 poems for young people. Ford's illustrations in sepia shades are bold and full of character and dreaming. As Virginia Hamilton says in her foreword, Giovanni's voice is personal and warm, she "celebrates ordinary folks" and writes of struggle and liberation. She's upbeat and celebratory without minimizing hard times. The publisher doesn't indicate which are the new poems, but, certainly, any library that doesn't have the original title will want to buy this one. These are poems that sing. Giovanni says, "if i were a poet / i'd kidnap you," and that's what she does. -Hazel Rochman

 

 

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