Celebrating The Poetry of Nikki Giovanni

Presented to the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Huntington

May 15, 2005

Rev. Paul Ratzlaff

 

We are blessed with a wonderful cultural resource, the Walt Whitman Birthplace, near the Walt Whitman Mall. (I always gag a little when I see Whitman’s populist words on the walls above The Gap, Macy’s, Abercrombie, et. al., temples of conspicuous consumption!) Each year the Birthplace Association invites a nationally recognized poet to read her or his poetry to celebrate Whitman’s birth. This year they have named Nikki Giovanni as their poet laureate. She will present some of her poems Sunday afternoon, June 5^th, beginning at noon. (How I pray that our congregational meeting ends in a timely fashion!)

Today I want to give you a taste of her work, if you haven’t encountered her before, or a reminder if you have. I will focus on three poems written after 9-11 from her 2002 collection Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea. Nikki Giovanni has been writing poems as an African-American expressing our history of civil rights, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X right on up to affairs of our day, such as 9-11, but with an African-American voice. I invite you to listen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I remember one of my puzzlements when I started to process the horror of 9-11. I wondered what was the internal world of the terrorists like? What were they thinking? I started with my assumption that terrorists are not a different order of being from myself and people I love. I don’t believe in an evil supernatural power that takes over a human for its own evil ends. I assume that the terrorists believed that they were doing good as they understood the “good.” “It’s not easy to understand how some dreams become nightmares,” writes Giovanni. How did their “dreams” become “nightmares?” What were their dreams? How do they differ from mine, from ours?

I fear that by suggesting that we need to understand terrorists, people hear me as wanting to justify their actions. I want to make clear that understanding does not equal legitimizing their actions. However, I do promote understanding as a way of connecting rather than demonizing. Analogously, it’s hard to understand the religious right, but we need to try if we want to counter their appeal. Striking back suppresses, it never transforms. If we going to share this planet, we need to do the hard work of understanding. 

She has the evocative line, “Those who wish and those who need often feel alone.” She implies the alienation that the hijackers may have felt – the despair that their wishes and needs would never be met in a world dominated by US and western culture. What action might I take were I to feel so powerless to achieve my wishes and needs?

“It’s so easy to strike back but hard to understand.” Over the past almost four years we the US have struck back with brutal punishment. But what more do we understand?

 

This next 9-11 poem focuses on the survivors. It helps me appreciate the poet’s gift of giving voice to the voiceless.

 

 

“Come…have dinner with me.” What a powerful symbol of all the ways we reached out to each other after 9-11 to repair the torn fabric of our community. Remember the many kindnesses extended to strangers. On the road, for a time, people were more thoughtful. People spoke tenderly with folks they didn’t know, the toll takers, cashiers, gas cowboys – wanting to hold and be held. And, of course, as Giovanni so poignantly reminds us, there were those who took in the other beings that share our world, and depend on us, our pets. “Come…have dinner with me.” Neighborhood how elusive, and yet how strong it can be when called on.

 

The third poem is this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m struck with the irony of the phrase “self-evident” repeated in this “self-evident poem.” When a descendent of slaves repeats the phrase self-evident, I cannot help but think of our Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal….” Hardly self-evident to a slave held by these patriots proclaiming self-evident truths!

Hence the irony in suggesting that European colonists now face the “fact” that this country is no longer “theirs.” It was never theirs to begin with…they came and took it and now it is taken back…that much anyone can see…it’s self-evident…no further explanation needed…

Then she turns the phrase to affirm her own self – her “inherent worth and dignity” to remind us of our first UU principle. Her “poem” is not less than her self. This poem is self-evident too…this poem needs no further explanation…this poem stands on its own as its own for its own sake…

Yet another obvious reality, a self-evident truth, is that black people have forgiven barbarism beyond measure, and have given us all a spirit that lifts us all out of the mire of hatred and rage. …[Y]ou’ve just got to love black folks for being able to bury the lynched and the burned for being able to bear the lash and lies for finding a song to lift our spirits and send our souls to a better place.

And white folks still don’t get that you can’t force another people to be a democracy, to be “free” as we define “free.” And you’ve just got to feel sorry for white folks who still do not understand this is another century and we just can’t keep bombing the same people over and over again because we don’t want to admit the craziness is home grown. What is the home grown craziness? I can only guess that it’s the assumption of white superiority and domination over all others on this planet.