Remembering Nikki Giovanni - ‘We Go Forward With a Sanity and a Love’

Summary

Podcast Summary

On Being with Krista Tippett

Episode: Remembering Nikki Giovanni – ‘We Go Forward With a Sanity and a Love’
Date: December 12, 2024
Featured Guest: Nikki Giovanni (poet, writer, professor, voice of the Black Arts Movement)
Host: Krista Tippett
Theme: A deep, lively, and loving exploration of Nikki Giovanni’s wisdom—her roots, her role as a poet and elder, her perspectives on race, love, legacy, survival, and the future.

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Overview

In this tribute episode, Krista Tippett revisits her much-loved 2016 conversation with the late Nikki Giovanni—a legendary voice in American poetry, a cherished elder, and a steady beacon after enormous tragedy at Virginia Tech. The episode embodies Giovanni’s trademark blend of humor, “high seriousness,” generational stewardship, and a relentless insistence on love and growth—as a Black woman, as a poet, and as a human being. Tippett and Giovanni discuss family, food, space travel, Black history, the meaning of poetry, coping with sorrow, and the importance of honesty and joy.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Rootedness, Family, and Inheritance

• On Grandmothers, Mothers, and Food (03:12)

  • Giovanni describes a family of “foodies before the word had been invented,” with stories of cooking, using every part of the chicken, and learning not to waste—from ingredients to experiences.
  • Quote: “There was nothing that came into [my grandmother’s] kitchen that she didn’t find a use for. And I feel the same way with experience and with words.” (01:18)

• Identity and Name

  • On changing her name from Yolanda to Nikki—an affirmation of identity and respect for her mother.

2. Spirituality, Black Womanhood, and Endurance

• Religious Upbringing (05:19)
  • Giovanni reflects on a Baptist upbringing, the power of the manger story (crediting Mary), and the pain and miracle of birth, both literal and metaphorical.
• Women’s Resilience and Communication
  • The creation of spirituals and survival during the Middle Passage: “It had to be a woman who said, I need to settle my people down… the only common language is going to be, mmm.” (07:09-07:56)

3. The Role of the Poet and Cultural Legacy

• On Being a "Revolutionary Poet" (08:10)

  • Giovanni reflects on life stages and the poet’s calling: “Somebody has to raise a voice… to say, we have to talk, and this is how we work.”
  • Quote: “What I have to do is use my smart to be of some service to human beings.” (10:24)

• Perspective as an Elder

  • Embraces her role as an inspiration for younger generations, while encouraging them to direct their own future: “They don’t need me to tell them what to do. They know what they should do today.” (13:24)

4. Imagination, Survival, and Black Futurism

• Space and the Future (14:01)

  • Giovanni's passion for space travel—linking the endurance of ancestors across the Middle Passage to the kind of resilience needed for interplanetary journeys.
  • Quote: “If you can survive that journey from west coast of Africa to the east coast of the United States and be sane when you get here… we have not dealt with the fact that they were sane when they got here.” (15:59)

• The “overview effect”: A radical shift in perception of life and unity, imagined as accessible to all one day.

5. Naming Sorrow and Building Resilience

• Virginia Tech Massacre and Poetry as Witness (20:14-23:15)

  • Giovanni tells the story of writing and delivering “We Are Virginia Tech” after the 2007 shooting, sharing its rawness, pride, and insistence on mourning without moving on for others’ comfort.
  • Quote from poem:
    “We are strong enough to stand tall tearlessly.
    We are brave enough to bend, to cry.
    We are sad enough to know that we must laugh again.” (20:14–22:28 full poem)

• The Healing Power and Authority of Poetry: Poetry as “telling truth as we understand it,” refusing to waste experience or voice.

6. Re-Examining History and Race

• Slavery, Survival, and Forward Movement (26:15)
  • On the need to see all sides in stories like Rosa Parks, and to understand that Black Americans are “always going forward… we go forward with a sanity and a love.”
  • Quote: “Race was a bad idea 200 years ago or 300 years ago. It’s a ridiculous idea today.” (16:29)

7. Love, Loss, and the Everyday

• Food, Family, and Love (30:30)
  • Giovanni’s candid reflections on love, both familial and romantic, and the lessons of food and memory.
  • Quote: “If I had a choice between food and sex to remember it, I’d always remember the food… the food was always wonderful.” (32:43)
  • Teaches her students: “You have a voice. Use it. Never let anybody take your voice away from you.” (25:40)

8. Radical Honesty, Truth-telling, and Generational Change

• Open talk about race and pain as catharsis and progress (“One of the nicest things [our generation] created was just the fact that we could say, hey, I don’t like white people. It was the beginning... of being able to like them.” (35:07))
• On the limits of justice and the necessity of new dialogue (38:12):
  “There is no justice. …What I’m going to do is tell you that [the world] needs to be changed, because it does… But the youngsters coming up are going to find another way.”

9. Beauty, Canons, and Creating New Worlds

• Beauty and Cultural Canon (44:21)
  • Giovanni is “not against the canon” but wants it to expand. She imagines the Mona Lisa smiling to the sound of spirituals and affirms the need for Black beauty and experience in the canon, too.
• Hope and the Future
  • Finds hope in community, travel, music—“I really, really like what we’re doing in the Black communities… and I think that’s something the world benefits from.” (45:41)

10. The Life of a Poet

• Writing as Self-Dialogue (46:35)
  • Writing, for Giovanni, is dialogue with oneself; the writer must “be pleased with it… you’re not writing so you can write a best seller… you’re writing to tell the truth.” (46:53)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On survival and forward motion:
  “All my people have ever done is go forward. And we go forward with a sanity and a love.” (27:54)

• On memory and identity:
  “I refuse to let who I was at 25 inform or make me be who somebody else thinks I should be at 72.” (25:09)

• On intergenerational wisdom:
  “I like to think, you know, essentially, I’m fertilizer, and so they’re growing something.” (13:18)

• On resilience and loss:
  “We are strong enough to stand tall tearlessly. We are brave enough to bend, to cry. And we are sad enough to know that we must laugh again.” (‘We Are Virginia Tech’ poem, 20:14–22:28)

• On beauty and inclusion:
  “What you want to say is, now let’s look at the Mona Lisa. …But I also know that there’s Ashley Bryan… He does a lot of work on illustrating the spirituals. I don’t want to exclude.” (44:21)

• On writing and honesty:
  “You’re writing to tell the truth and you’re writing to satisfy that in you that says, ‘I have this truth to share.’” (46:53)

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Timestamps of Important Segments

• Roots, food, waste and inheritance: 01:00–04:12
• Spiritual legacy & the language of survival: 05:19–07:56
• Being a “revolutionary poet” & generational responsibility: 08:10–10:43
• On being an elder and role model: 11:56–13:28
• Space, futurism, and Black endurance: 14:00–15:59
• The “We Are Virginia Tech” poem and bearing witness: 20:14–23:15
• Rethinking slavery, identity and going forward: 26:15–28:55
• On love, family, and what endures: 30:30–33:08
• Truth-telling, race, and dialogue: 35:07–39:18
• On beauty, canon, and inclusivity: 44:21–45:41
• Writing, dialogue, and telling the truth: 46:35–47:28

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The Episode’s Lasting Messages

• Wisdom is making use of every “ingredient” of life—nothing is wasted, everything shapes us.
• Poetry is service; it’s raising a voice for those in the ship, in the room, or across generations.
• Love is vital, but not all love lasts; learning what to keep and what to let go is maturity.
• The Black American journey is always toward the future, with sanity and love.
• True justice may be elusive, but new ways of living and talking must be found.
• Include every song, every story, every flavor in the canon—the future needs all our voices.
• “You have a voice. Use it.”

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Tone

The episode radiates Giovanni’s warmth, honesty, insistent intellect, and humor. It is celebratory but unflinching about pain and history, rich in storytelling, bracing in its refusal of sentimentality, and deeply hopeful in its belief in growth, legacy, and love.

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Additional Selected Quotes with Timestamps

• “I am not sure that justice can come from any of that. The only thing that can come is revenge, and revenge is a bad idea.” (38:12 – Nikki Giovanni)
• "I hope my skin doesn’t change to those blotchy colors. I hope my shoulder finds a head that needs nesting…and I hope I die warmed by the life that I tried to live.” (47:45 – Nikki Giovanni, poem)
• “Never let anybody take your voice away from you. Don’t waste what you know.” (25:40 – Nikki Giovanni)
• “We will prevail. We will prevail. We will prevail. We are Virginia Tech.” (22:28 – ‘We Are Virginia Tech’ poem)
• “Love is no better than the lover. Crazy people love craziness.” (30:43 – quoting Toni Morrison)

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This episode offers replenishment, orientation, and clarity—a celebration of Nikki Giovanni’s lived wisdom and the gifts she has given to generations past, present, and yet to come.

Transcript

[Narrator/Producer]

Support for On Being with Krista Tippett comes from the Fetzer Institute, helping build the spiritual foundation for a loving world. Fetzer envisions a world that embraces love as a guiding principle and animating force for our lives, a powerful love that helps us live in sacred relationship with ourselves, others, and the natural world. Learn more by visiting Fetzer.org it feels

[Krista Tippett]

good and right this week to sit with the beloved writer Nikki Giovanni's signature mix of high seriousness, sweeping perspectives, and insistent pleasure. She was a poet of the Black arts movement that nourished civil rights. She's a professor at Virginia Tech, where she brought beauty and courage after the 2007 shooting there. And she's an adored voice to a new generation, an enthusiastic elder to us all, at home in her body and in the world of her lifetime, even while she sees and delights in the beyond of it.

[Nikki Giovanni]

You're always doing the best that you can do, and you're always taking whatever ingredients you are given and making whatever it is that you can make. And so being a black American, and I don't mean to bring race in like that, but being a black American, I'm used to taking little bits of this, that and the other. My grandmother did not waste. There was nothing that came into her kitchen that she didn't find a use for. And I feel the same way with experience and with words. And as I have grown older, I refuse to let who I was at 25 inform or make me be who somebody else thinks I should be at 72.

[Krista Tippett]

I'm Krista Tippett, and this is On Being. Nikki Giovanni has received numerous awards for her books of poetry and her works for children. She's a university distinguished professor in the English department at Virginia Tech, where she's taught since 1987. I spoke with her in 2016.

[Interviewer/Host]

One of the most striking things that just jumped out at me all the way through your writing and writing about you, and all the way to the latest volume of poetry you published in 2013, is how from the very beginning

[Krista Tippett]

you were held and cherished and taught

[Interviewer/Host]

by courageous, loving women.

[Nikki Giovanni]

Yeah.

[Interviewer/Host]

Your mother, you were named. Her first name is Yolanda, Right. So you kind of named her.

[Nikki Giovanni]

Yeah, it used to be when Mommy passed, I had it legally changed to Nikki just because that's what everybody knows me, I would have never done it when Mommy was here.

[Krista Tippett]

I see.

[Nikki Giovanni]

Because I wouldn't want her to think I didn't want to carry her name. I'm Yolanda Jr.

[Interviewer/Host]

So how old were you when you

[Nikki Giovanni]

changed your Name legally, then mommy's been dead 10 years. So I was 62, something like that, 63 years old.

[Krista Tippett]

And how do you say your grandmother's name?

[Interviewer/Host]

Lauvenia Lavania.

[Nikki Giovanni]

Lauvenia Lavinia. But everybody actually calls her Emma Lou. Emma Lou. Okay.

[Interviewer/Host]

Emma Lavinia Watson, also that. You were all. It sounds like foodies before the word had been invented.

[Nikki Giovanni]

Oh, definitely. Grandmother was a foodie, and Grandmother's friends were foodies. And of course, I ended up living with Grandmother. Not ended up, but was fortunate to live with Grandmother. So Mommy was a good cook because she was grandmother's daughter. And my Aunt Ann was a good cook. Living with Grandmother. I learned all of their tricks. My favorite was, of course, her greens. And I'm still, still, still working on that, because making greens is one of life's difficulties. It looks like you just clean them and stuff. Well, Mommy and Grandmother, too. You pull the stems, and then you tie the stems and you put the leaves in, and you use the stems to flavor, and then you pull it out. And so she was very good at that. But the other thing. I was laughing, and I'm laughing about this. You didn't ask me about this, but in Grandmother's Day, you know, you used to go to the market and you bought a live chicken. Actually, Grandpapa did the marketing, and he would bring it home and they'd put it in the backyard, and then Grandmother would go out Saturday morning and wring its neck.

[Interviewer/Host]

Yeah, yeah.

[Nikki Giovanni]

But, you know, you learn to do that. And I guess I have learned, too. It's something that I'm dealing with on another kind of level. But for something to live, something else usually dies. There's a transition. It's not something I would have been able even to say to you even 50 years ago, in my 20s. I wouldn't have. It's really. It's been interesting.

[Interviewer/Host]

You were born in 1943, is that right?

[Nikki Giovanni]

Yes.

[Interviewer/Host]

And so you grew up in. I like this. You talk a lot about what we call the 60s, what is called the 60s, which you really date from about 1954 to 1960, which was such a dramatic moment. I mean, a lot of transition. I mean, you've just been using that word. One question I ask people, whoever I'm talking to usually, is, how would you describe the religious and spiritual background of your childhood? And I wonder how you would start to talk about that. And I really mean the fullness of that. You know, your family, but also that world you came into.

[Nikki Giovanni]

First of all, I grew up, of course, Baptist, because Grandmother was a Baptist, Mount Zion Baptist Church. But when Mommy married, my father married. We called him Gus. We called Daddy Gus. When Mommy married Gus, they moved to Cincinnati because he couldn't get a job. He was a college graduate, and he couldn't get a job in Knoxville. And so they moved to Cincinnati where he could get a job, and Mommy joined the AME Church. But if we're just going to just kind of breeze on religion without getting into anybody's business, you know, I recently have been fascinated with why it is that we don't actually look into the manger more. We always look at the cross. And I think that one of the problems with the manger is that we have to give Mary credit for bringing God to Earth. And the book that I'm working on right now actually is called A Good Cry. And it's just because I realize women keep a lot of things in them. I do know this from Mary, and I'm going to give Mary credit. Having a baby hurts. I don't care who it is or where it came from. Having a baby hurts. So I want to give Mary her props, and I also want to deal with the fact that as we are giving this birth, a part of what the Christian religion is supposed to do is give birth to a new human being. You asked one kind of question. I don't know if I'm answering it, strangely.

[Interviewer/Host]

No, it's great.

[Krista Tippett]

It's.

[Interviewer/Host]

I think this question lands wherever in us it wants to be given voice. I mean, you also once said. You said you always think it must have been a woman who developed the spiritual.

[Nikki Giovanni]

Oh, gosh, yeah. When we look at slavery, which actually slavery is only going to be the end result. We have to look at the kidnapping in Africa. We have to look at, no matter what the country, we have to look at the fact that somebody sold and somebody purchased, and that just cannot be denied. We are upset, of course, with the Europeans because we said, oh, they created slavery. They might have, but they didn't create the buying and selling of human beings. That had been going on for quite some time all over. So we had the people coming across that ocean, not knowing where they were going, but knowing whatever it was, they were not going to go back to where they used to be. So somehow or another, they had to make a decision, how do we go forward? But it had to be a woman, because we're back to the manger. We're back to Mary. We're back to. That's what women do. It had to be a woman who said, I need to settle my people down. And when you consider that there were a lot of languages going on, she didn't speak English at that point. They didn't speak Swahili at that point. There were many languages. The only common language is going to be, mmm. So when we get to what is going to ultimately become the United States, these people had created a way to speak to themselves, to each other, through the language, through spirituals.

[Interviewer/Host]

Yeah. So when you were 25, you wrote, I'm 25 years old, a revolutionary poet. I love. I kind of want to ask you about the I love tacked on at the end of the sentence. But I also want to ask you about what you meant at 25 when you said you were a revolutionary poet, and how you look at that now as Nikki Giovanni quite a few years later.

[Nikki Giovanni]

Well, I think 25 was good, but I always thought 25 was 1/4 of my life. And I felt the same way at 50. I don't feel the same way at 70. I'm not sure that I'll make 75, but I always felt like, okay, this is a fourth of my life. What am I doing and what am I trying to do? Well, a part of what I'm doing is articulating. I would be, if I would be unfortunate enough, if I can say it like that, to be on that ship. I would be the person who started the song. Because somebody has to raise a voice. Somebody has to raise. I don't know what the word is. It's not just courage, but the foresight or something to say, we have to talk, and this is how we work.

[Interviewer/Host]

Or the soul of a poet. Maybe. Somebody has to have the soul of a poet.

[Nikki Giovanni]

Sure, that works for me. I mean, that song had to come from someplace. And I would like to think that if I were on that ship, I would raise that song. But since I'm not, I'm at 25, I'm at a turning point in America. And we had to raise our voice to say, it is now time. You know, middle passage is over. This is segregation. It's time that we moved into a new world, a new generation. And of course, I had the great pleasure, ultimately, of knowing Mrs. Parks. But it was so Rosa Parks. And yes, it was so important that somebody stand up. I didn't know Thurgood Marshall. It wouldn't have been wonderful to have had a glass of wine with Thurgood. Oh, my goodness. I mean, what a brilliant, brilliant man. So I came up at a time that I thought I could be of some Use that. My voice could be of some use. I'm not strong. I'm not fast. I don't have any talents. I'm not that pretty, you know, so all of the things that one normally thinks about women and what they should do, I really don't do it. But I am smart. And. And so I thought what I have to do is use my smart to be of some service to human beings.

[Krista Tippett]

I'm Krista Tippett, and this is on Being Today with the poet Nikki Giovanni.

[Interviewer/Host]

You know, I'm curious about, and this is a huge question, but I'm so curious about what you might share about how you're inhabiting this moment now. And as a grandmother of a young woman who's going to be growing up in this world and of an adult son. And I've also been watching on YouTube

[Krista Tippett]

these interviews that a lot of great

[Interviewer/Host]

young black hip hop people and actors and entertainers do with you and the

[Krista Tippett]

reverence, like, they look up to you.

[Interviewer/Host]

And so I'm curious about the conversation you're having inside yourself and also with your friends and across generations about what you lived through and participated in in the 60s and 50 years later. So where, you know, how that helped you make sense of now or critique now or worry or be proud or hopeful about where we are now.

[Nikki Giovanni]

I actually think of myself as the quintessential existentialist. So I live now. And one of my either great strengths or great faults I haven't figured out, and I probably won't, is that I don't go back. I don't reread poetry like that. I don't rethink myself. I just try to bring the best that I have today. I'm incredibly thrilled that the youngsters. I have a Thug Life tattoo on my arm. And when I get a minute, I'm going to put another. I said I was only going to have one tattoo, but I'm going to put another tattoo as soon as I come back, actually, from vacation. And it's going to say, hokies don't hate. Because I think that that was important.

[Interviewer/Host]

Hokies is the.

[Nikki Giovanni]

What's the Virginia Tech?

[Interviewer/Host]

Virginia Tech kind of. I don't know, what do you say their nickname?

[Nikki Giovanni]

When we had the situation in Paris, you know, people were picking on the Muslims and the community. The Virginia Tech community had a big rally on the drill field and they gave out bands. I don't have it on right now, but the band said, hokies don't hate. And I thought, yeah, next to Thug Life, that's the next statement that I think is important to make. Hokies don't hate. We don't hate. I'm, as I say, I am incredibly thrilled that the youngsters look at my work and look at some of the things that. That I've done, and they found some good in it. I like to think, you know, essentially, I'm fertilizer, and so they're growing something. I don't meddle. I really don't. And I get asked, you know, I'm 72, so I get asked, well, what do you think the kids should do today? And I don't know what the kids should do today. They know what they should do today. I like, you know, black Lives Matter. I think that that's important. I have the button. I can't breathe. I think that that's important. But they don't need me to tell them what to do. They're perfectly capable, and I think they're doing an incredibly. But, you know, we're just all living in this world at this time. And one of the great thrills of my life is I'm a space freak. I'm an Appalachian.

[Interviewer/Host]

Yes.

[Nikki Giovanni]

I was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, grew up in Cincinnati, and I'm now here. I was in New York for 20 years or so, but I am now here in Roanoke, Virginia. So I spent most of my life in Appalachia. We are used to the quiet, and we are used to looking at the star, in my opinion, looking at the stars, dreaming. And if we're going to really go into space, we really need two things, if I may say so, like that we need. Well, actually, we need black people. We need really, really more black people involved. And we need wine. And we have to find a way to deal with the wine. And if we can do that, then you can spend 500 days going up to Mars and you can be sane when you get there. You see what I'm saying?

[Interviewer/Host]

Yeah, I do. So at the very beginning of your book, of the Chasing Utopia book, you just tell this quick story about interviewing Mae Jemison, who was the first black woman to go into space. And that's such a great story. You asked her how did she avoid getting bored? And when she said, I pay attention or what did she say? Boredom. I can't remember. Do you remember?

[Nikki Giovanni]

What I'm not looking at in front of me, but Mae Jemison's a great kid. I called Essence magazine, and I've been knowing ESSENCE forever. I remember when they started and when they said Mae Jemison was going into space. I called ESSENCE and I said, listen, I want you to understand so that there'll be no misunderstanding, I interview Mae Jemison. I'm going to come down there, and all of you will be sorry. And they said, okay, Nikki, you can do it. And I was so pleased. And May did that. She paid attention, but May did not have 500 days. And we might get it down to 400, but that's a little over a year to sit on a spaceship and, you know, you're not going to have any sex. You know, I mean, the things that you wouldn't normally do within a year, you're not going to have it. And so what we have to do is find a way and find the people who are used to being within themselves.

[Interviewer/Host]

You also connect these things to your aspiration and imagination about the black connection to the future of planet Earth.

[Krista Tippett]

How do I say.

[Nikki Giovanni]

And also, it goes back to. Let me interrupt you for a minute. It goes back to Middle Passage, because if you can survive that journey from west coast of Africa to the east coast of the United States and be sane when you get here, and that's what we haven't looked at. And so again, a part of my research that I'm trying to do now, and hopefully I'll live long enough to get more done than I've been doing, though I'm working on it. A part of my research is that we have not dealt with the fact that they were sane when they got here. I just wrote a poem and I said one of the lines in the poem said, pluto will one day be. Another will be a planet. And we're going to send black kids up there to learn how to ski. And I love it. We have got to quit dealing now. Race was a bad idea 200 years ago or 300 years ago. It's a ridiculous idea. Today was a bad idea. And it's a ridiculous idea today. We're on the third planet from yellow sun. We have got to come together to see. And how do we make sense out of this? And how do we find a way to bring the sanity into this? How do we find a way to make the best of us?

[Poetry Reader]

We're going to Mars because whatever is wrong with us will not get right with us. So we journey forth carrying the same baggage, but every now and then, leaving one little bitty. One day looking for prejudice to slip. One day looking for hatred to tumble by the wayside. Maybe one day the Jewish community will be at rest. The Christian community will be content. The Muslim community will be at peace. And all the rest of us will get great meals at holy days and learn new songs and sing in harmony. We're going to Mars because it gives us a reason to change.

[Interviewer/Host]

I was thinking as I was reading your passion about space, that you're a space freak, as you say. Have you ever heard of this language of the overview effect? It's actually a documented effect of something that happens to astronauts, people who've been in space, that they get this sense of perspective that is kind of life altering, that changes the way they then come back to culture. Ever heard of that?

[Nikki Giovanni]

No, I didn't.

[Interviewer/Host]

I mean, here's one way somebody described it says it refers to the experience of seeing firsthand the reality of the earth in space, which is immediately understood to be a tiny, fragile ball of life hanging in a void, shielded and nourished by a paper thin atmosphere. From space, national boundaries vanish, the conflicts that divide people become less important. And the need to create a place, planetary society with the united will to protect this pale blue dot becomes both obvious and imperative. I don't know if that's what you're talking about, but that's.

[Nikki Giovanni]

Yes, and said much better. But that is exactly. Can you imagine when we have people doing sort of a normal. Oh, what are you going to do next weekend, John? Well, you know, Mary and I were thinking, you know, we'd just run up to the space station and have a glass of champagne and we'll spend the night and we'll be back. Can you imagine sex in space?

[Interviewer/Host]

I have to confess I've never thought about it before.

[Nikki Giovanni]

All right, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to embarrass you.

[Interviewer/Host]

No, no, you didn't. I just. I think we have to return to Earth here for a little while in this conversation, though. I mean, you know, we were talking about the spirituals before and that kind of led into this, the question of how people stay sane, and not just sane, but bring beauty into the world. And, and the spirituals as such an incredible demonstration of that. I mean, you also mentioned Virginia Tech and I just. I want to come back to that terrible massacre in 2007. And you did deliver a poem that day. And to me, when I read it and hear it again, the spirit of the spirituals is in it, which is about facing reality head on. And including. Those spirituals were called sorrow songs.

[Nikki Giovanni]

Right?

[Interviewer/Host]

You said, we are Virginia Tech. We are sad today and we will be sad for quite a while. We are not moving on. We are embracing our mourning. We are Virginia Tech. We Are strong enough to stand tall tearlessly. We are brave enough to bend, to cry. And we are sad enough to know that we must laugh again.

[Nikki Giovanni]

When Sandy Smith, who was the President's Dr. Steger's assistant, called me and you know, Everybody. I knew Mr. Cho. I knew the murderer, and I knew some of the students who were killed. I know that Mr. Cho, I had kicked him out of my class, and that's a longer story. But some people said, you know, was he after you? But I'm never on campus on Monday, So I knew Mr. Cho wasn't looking for me. He was doing something else. And so when Sandy Smith called me, she said, nikki, we need you to anchor complication. I knew that I was incredibly sad. Actually, I'm tearing up right now, and I apologize. Anybody that knows me knows that, you know, I'm pretty good on my feet. But I knew that I couldn't walk into an auditorium as sad as I was. And I just didn't want to trust myself to do the right thing. So I just sat down and wrote what was important. And what was important to me was that we are Virginia Tech, not what happened.

[Poetry Reader]

We are Virginia Tech. We are sad today and we will

be sad for quite a while.

We are not moving on. We are embracing our mourning. We are Virginia Tech. We are strong enough to stand tall tearlessly. We are brave enough to bend a cry and sad enough to know we must laugh again. We are Virginia Tech. We do not understand this tragedy. We know we did nothing to deserve it. But neither does a child in Africa dying of aids. Neither do the invisible children walking the night away to avoid being captured by a rogue army. Neither does the baby elephant watching his community be devastated for ivory. Neither does the Mexican child looking for fresh water. Neither does the Appalachian infant killed in

[Nikki Giovanni]

the middle of the night in his

[Poetry Reader]

crib in the home his father built with his own hands, being run over by a boulder because the land was destabilized. No one deserves a tragedy. We are Virginia Tech. The Hokie nation embraces our own and reaches out with open heart and hands to those who offer their hearts and minds. We are strong and brave and innocent and unafraid. We are better than we think and not quite what we want to be. We are alive to the imagination and the possibility. We will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears, through all this sadness. We are the Hokies. We will prevail. We will prevail. We will prevail. We are Virginia Tech.

[Interviewer/Host]

And it was an incredible poem and also what was so striking to me and telling really about what you do and about who we are as human beings. Human beings is, you know, there was just incredible applause and then whoever stood up next, and I don't know if it was the president said, boy, did we need that.

[Nikki Giovanni]

I don't remember. I was just glad that I was able to do that.

[Interviewer/Host]

Yeah. And if you think about poetry and the place of poetry in human life and also in common life and how it's something we forget, but it kind of resurfaces again and again. And I felt like that moment after that terrible tragedy at Virginia Tech and you know, you as a poet, you know, saying we will prevail. There was this authority of that form of language. I wonder how surprised you might have been at that 25 year old revolutionary poet. You know that there are moments when we honor poetry and poets and understand how necessary it is. Do you know what I'm saying?

[Nikki Giovanni]

You know, even now, to be honest, and I say this to my students, I don't. My students are too young to understand that you don't plan your life. The life of a poet is not planned. You're just always doing well, we're back to cooking. You're always doing the best that you can do and you're always taking whatever ingredients you are given and making whatever it is that you can make. Am I making sense? And so being a black American, and I don't mean to bring race in like that, but being a black American, I'm used to taking little bits of this, that and the other. My grandmother did not waste. There was nothing that came into her kitchen that she didn't find a use for. And I feel the same way with experience and with words. And as I have grown older, I refuse to let who I was at 25 inform or make me be who somebody else thinks I should be at 72. And I think that this is what maybe the young rappers. Jill Scott called me the other day and it was really just such a pleasure to talk to that young lady. But. But what I was at Jill's age, I'm not now. I'm learning something. I'm looking again at slavery. And I'm going to look at it very differently because I've learned so much. I'm not a novelist and I have good friends who are novelists. And I'm always laughing at you novelists. You know, you sit down and you say, this is what I'm going to write because this was a best seller. But we don't do that. Poets don't have bestsellers. I've had a couple, but it's been an accident, you know, nobody knows why, but. But poetry is not on that level. So we're always trying to just tell the truth as we understand it. And I want my students to understand that you have a voice. Use it. Never let anybody take your voice away from you. That's what's important. And don't waste. Back to that. Don't waste what you know. You'd be surprised at how many people actually waste what they know, not to mention waste what they feel.

[Interviewer/Host]

Would you say a little bit more about what your reflections that you had in that conversation about how you're thinking about slavery now in ways that you didn't think about it before?

[Nikki Giovanni]

Well, we all know. Let me approach it this way, if you don't mind. We all know Rosa Parks, and we all know Mrs. Parks refused to give up. Mr. Blake said to her, I want you all to give up this seat. It was the four of them sitting there and Mrs. Parks who was sitting on the aisle, and there was a man on the window and two people across. Mrs. Parks said, no. She got up to let the man on the window out, and she sat back down. What I asked my students, and what I'm sharing with you is what did the white man who was standing there think when he saw this woman standing up by sitting down for herself? Who was he? We've never looked at who is he and what were his thoughts? And so when you say, as I look into slavery, well, we know that there were victims in slavery. I don't have any problem with that. But we also know that something good came out of slavery because we in black America became Americans. Because we, you know, no matter what Marcus Garvey or any of the rest say, there is no back to this. Is it for us because we have no place to go back. I'm, what, a fifth generation American? Something like that, if I'd have to do the math. But there's no place to go back. So it's not unusual for somebody like me to be in love with something like Mars, because all my people have ever done is go forward. And we go forward with a sanity and a love. And I think that that's so important that planet Earth tap into that. Quit playing these little stupid race games and find out what it is that these people are bringing to all of us as we go forward.

[Poetry Reader]

This is not a poem. No. It is a celebration of the road we have traveled. It is a prayer for the roads yet to come. This is an explosion, the original big bang that makes the world a hopeful, loving place. This is the black woman in all our trouble and glory and all our past history and future forbearance and all that ever made love a possibility. This is about us giving pride, giving succor, giving voice, giving encouragement, giving whatever we can give. This is about us celebrating ourselves. And a well deserved honor it is. Light the candles. This is a rocket.

[Nikki Giovanni]

Let's ride.

[Krista Tippett]

After a short break, more with Nikki Giovanni. I'm Krista Tippett and this is on Being this week with the beloved writer, avowed space freak and enthusiastic elder, Nikki Giovanni. We're soaking up her signature mix of high seriousness, sweeping perspective and insistent pleasure. How she's able to be at home in her body and in the world of her lifetime while also seeing and delighting in the beyond of it. I interviewed her in 2016.

[Interviewer/Host]

You know, one thing that just runs all the way through a picture, getting a picture of your life is that you've been loved well. You were loved well in the beginning and you've loved well. There's these famous lines from some of your early poetry that black love is black wealth. And they'll probably talk about my hard childhood and never understand that all the while I was quite happy. I mean, you just used the word love. Does that word, how does that word figure in as you think about a vision for us as human beings, you know, in terms of race and beyond race and this world that you'd like to see us be creating?

[Nikki Giovanni]

You know, love is important. I think my father was an idiot. And more, I don't think that my father was an idiot.

[Interviewer/Host]

He was abusive, right? He was violent.

[Nikki Giovanni]

Yeah, he was. And I don't know what I couldn't begin to tell you what made me understand that whatever was going on with Gus had nothing to do with how mommy felt about me and felt about Gary. Gus was crazy, but he loved us. So I think, as Toni Morrison, that said, love is no better than the lover. Crazy people love craziness. And I think she's absolutely right. And I don't know what let me separate so that I didn't learn to dislike him. I just didn't let that which does not suit me determine who I am. And I feel the same way. And I think that we're looking at young black youngsters and young white youngsters today. I said that to my students because I have white youngsters. They didn't create slavery, so there's no reason for them to feel guilty. About it. What we all need to do is decide how we want to go forward. Am I making sense from this? I'm going to be sorry when I retire because I enjoy, if it's one thing that I definitely Enjoy, it's my 8 o' clock class. My 8 o' clock class. They come to me 8am they come to me from their dreams and I come to them from mine. And I would give up a lot of things in terms of teaching. I really don't want to give up my 8 o' clock because I like the freshness that they bring. And the other word would be I like the love that we have for each other as we come into that class. And I think you have to make up your mind what you're going to love. And the other day I had the pleasure, the absolute pleasure of having okra made with chicken feet. And I hadn't had chicken feet since. Oh, since I lived with grandmother. She's been dead a long time. I just couldn't believe it. I just sat there. I wanted to lick the bowl. It was so good. I don't know if you've ever had okra. I don't know if you've ever had chicken feet because nobody does it.

[Interviewer/Host]

I'm not sure. I'm not sure I've had chicken feet. I haven't had okra. I do love okra, but I haven't had it with chicken feet.

[Nikki Giovanni]

Oh my. Well, it was so wonderful.

[Interviewer/Host]

Is that where your mind and heart go when you're thinking about love? It ends up with food. Is that.

[Nikki Giovanni]

Yeah. If I had a choice between food and sex to remember it, I'd always remember the food. The sex wasn't bad in some cases, but the food was always wonderful.

[Interviewer/Host]

So you're saying love is a great thing and also it's not always healthy and so it's not necessarily that useful to throw it around as a word.

[Nikki Giovanni]

Well, no, you can't just throw it around. I think you have to make up your mind what you love and what loves you. And I think that's a two way street. And I think you have to be patient with your love. All love doesn't work. We know that. Whether it's food, whether that's a human being, whether that's a dog, whether that's the garden you used to grow, I mean, whatever it is. But outgrowing something or not needing it doesn't make you dislike it. It just means that you've learned that lesson. You have earned what it had to offer you. You've done that, and now you move on. I'm not married, but I have friends who are divorced. And it was like, oh, it was such a mistake. Well, it wasn't a mistake. It was a lesson Learned. You had 10 good years, and you have children and, you know, whatever, the house or whatever. But everything is a lesson. And so you have to find out what's the lesson and how do I embrace this lesson and how do I go forward? And you have to watch out for the bitterness. That's what you don't want to be bothered with.

[Poetry Reader]

You were gone like a fly lighting on that wall with a spider in the corner. You were gone like last week's paycheck for this week's bills. You were gone like the years between 25 and 30, as if somehow you never existed. And if it wouldn't be for the gray hairs, I'd never know that you had come.

[Interviewer/Host]

There's another line I wrote down from your talk with James Baldwin, 1973. So one thing you said to him is, you said one of the nicest things we created as a generation was just the fact that we could say, hey, I don't like white people. And then you said, it was the beginning, of course, of being able to like them.

[Nikki Giovanni]

Yeah.

[Interviewer/Host]

Which is such an honest.

[Nikki Giovanni]

That makes sense. Yeah, that makes total sense. Because once you can articulate, once you can get it out, then something else can come back in. It makes total sense. I don't know what else to say about that.

[Interviewer/Host]

Well, and it seemed helpful to me. I feel like we're in this moment. So much has come to the surface that obviously needed to come to the surface, but we still don't know quite what to do with it. And I feel like we, at this point, 50 years on from that civil rights movement of Dr. King and all the people of that era, we think we're supposed to know how to do this, and we don't. And we don't know how to tell each other the truth or tell ourselves the truth. And so that statement that you made, that we could say, hey, I don't like white people, it's so refreshingly true and real. That's not even really a question, but.

[Nikki Giovanni]

Well, the line you were quoting Nikki Rosa earlier, and I could push it back from where you were, and the line was, and I really hope no white person ever has cause to write about me because they never understand black love is black wealth. And they'll probably talk about my hard childhood and never understand that. All the while, I was quite happy. And I Think that what I'm trying to say or what I, you know, I don't want to second guess myself either, but I think what was important to me is that I don't want to be put into a box. We need to stop that old fashioned racism and get back into where we as human beings are going. We really do. Right?

[Interviewer/Host]

I mean, you also are on a college campus a lot. Do you think there's. Isn't there something healthy right now about the fact that there's truth being told and these things that happen, they're being reckoned with? I mean, imperfectly, but that has changed. Do you see that too? Or do you have a different.

[Nikki Giovanni]

I'm not sure what you mean when you say truth being told.

[Interviewer/Host]

Well, as you wrote in 1988, People get shot and it's not. There's no outcry, there are no marches, there are no sanctions. And now there are pictures and there's an outcry and there's sanctions and we're not quite sure what to do with it. But these things aren't invisible anymore.

[Nikki Giovanni]

I just wrote a. And I'm struggling with it, by the way, because it's on a deadline. It happens to be one of the few.

[Interviewer/Host]

Oh, you're struggling with this piece you're

[Nikki Giovanni]

writing and I'm struggling to make it. But the third line in the poem says, you know, we cannot be un raped. And I was interested because, you know, we've had a lot of, you know, campus rape and then we find out that some of it isn't quite, quite accurate. But no matter what it is, we cannot un rape. And I'm not sure I'm having this argument with myself. I don't know where this is going to go, by the way, but I'm not sure that justice can come from any of that. Only thing that can come from that is revenge. And revenge is a bad idea. I mean, the Greeks learned that 800

[Interviewer/Host]

years ago that justice can come from any of what.

[Nikki Giovanni]

That there is no. If you right now came in here and beat the living crap out of me, there is no justice. There is no justice. I had the living crap beaten out of me. I can sue you, I can get revenge, but I can't. There's no justice. And so I'm beginning to wonder, should we change this dialogue we have? And I'm sorry to say it like that, I'm not namby pamby, but we're going to have to find a way to talk to each other. And I think that that's what's important. So I'm probably not making sense.

[Interviewer/Host]

No, you are making sense. I mean, you said a minute ago that we need to work with where we're going. And it strikes me, and I think that's also what you're saying here, that there's the anger and pain at injustice, which is real. And there's also this other work. If you say that there's no justice, then there's this other work of also creating the world we want to live in, which may be so imperfectly tied to righting those wrongs or just trying

[Nikki Giovanni]

to learn to live with the fact that some things we're going to say you cannot do, and then some things we're going to say, but though you have done them, we have to find a way to live with them. And that doesn't mean we reward you for what you've done, but it also means that. That we need another level of dialogue. I'm a big fan of the Greeks for a lot of reasons. Not because they have terrible winers, you know, but I'm a big fan of the Greeks. But it would have been fun to have lived at the time that you could walk around and talk to, you know, Socrates or, you know, Aristotle or somebody and say, you know, let's remake the world. My students and I, because we talk about everything, because we're writers and we were talking about how there was an imbalance. I don't have to tell you that there is a terrible, terrible imbalance in economic privileges. And one of my students, young man who does that, he said, well, what are you going to do? And I said, I don't know what I'm going to do. What I'm going to do is tell you that it needs to be changed, because it does. The economic system that we live on needs to be changed. And I can't think of it because I'm. I'm 72 and I'm already stuck with what I am. But the youngsters coming up are going to find another way to handle this.

[Poetry Reader]

Childhood remembrances are always a drag. If you're black, you always remember things like living in Woodlawn with no inside toilet. And if you become famous or something, they never talk about how happy you were to have your mother all to yourself and how good the water felt when you got your bath from one of those big tubs that folk in Chicago barbecue in. And somehow when you talk about home, it never gets across how much you understood their feelings as the whole family attended meetings about Hollydale. And even though you Remember, your biographers never understand your father's pain as he sells his stock. And another dream goes. And though you're poor, it isn't poverty that concerns you. And though they fought a lot, it isn't your father's drinking that makes any difference, but only that everybody is together. And you and your sister have happy birthdays and very good Christmases. And I really hope no white person ever has cause to write about me because they never understand black love is black wealth. And they'll probably talk about my hard childhood and never understand that all the while, I was quite happy.

[Krista Tippett]

I'm krista tippett, and this is on being today with the poet nikki giovanni.

[Interviewer/Host]

You're enjoying being in your 70s, I sense.

[Nikki Giovanni]

I do. I recommend it. I do. I love it.

[Interviewer/Host]

And I love how you are just continuing to wrestle and change your mind and ask questions, and your vision is just constantly evolving, it seems.

[Nikki Giovanni]

But everybody says the only difference between me and most people is that I'm not afraid to talk about it.

[Interviewer/Host]

That's right, you do. That's right. You talk about it very openly. You know something? Here's something. I don't know where you wrote this. The state of the world we live in is so depressing. You wrote, and this is not because of the reality of the men who run it, but because it just doesn't have to be that way. The possibilities of life are so great and beautiful that to see less wears the spirit down. I was at a gathering recently, and the topic of the gathering was on beauty. It was a gathering of writers, artists, architects, philosophers, psychologists, people working in different fields. And one of the points of contention that we got to in the room was somebody said, and he was a white man in his 60s, maybe said

[Krista Tippett]

that he believed that there is a

[Interviewer/Host]

canon of beauty, that there are certain works of art and works of writing that you basically have to be made out of stone not to experience and get shivers and perhaps cry, be moved by. And he was saying that we should take beauty seriously as a cultural good

[Krista Tippett]

and that we should have a kind

[Interviewer/Host]

of a canon that children experience and

[Krista Tippett]

they claim as their own.

[Interviewer/Host]

But this was also controversial because the idea was that, in fact, we've had an idea in the west that there's a canon of beauty, and it's excluded a lot of other people's sense of what is beautiful and what is meaningful. I wonder how you take in that idea. But also, I think, more importantly, I'm curious, what would be your canon of beauty?

[Nikki Giovanni]

That's going to be another hard Question. I'm not against the canon. Let me be really clear about that. I'm not against the canon. Because if we give you a canon, then you will vary on it, okay? And so I don't have any. Any problem with that. If, for example, I learned, which I just went to see the other day, the Messiah, I don't have any problem with the canon because it will change. You build on what you know. And I think that it's up to all of us to say, well, this I want you to learn. I want you. I got no problem with Mona Lisa. This is what I want you to look at. But I also know that there's Ashley Bryan, and I know that Ashley Bryan and the work that he does, which is so beautiful, he does a lot of work on illustrating the spirituals. I don't want to exclude. I don't want some teacher to stand up there and say, well, that's crap, because it's not the. You don't want that. What you want to say is, now let's look at. Let's look at the Mona Lisa. And she's smiling. Why is she smiling? Well, I think she's probably smiling because she was listening to the Fist Jubilee Singers and they were singing some beautiful spirituals for her. You see what I'm saying?

[Interviewer/Host]

I do. I like it. If I ask you, when you look around the world right now, Today, in your 72nd year, where do you see beauty? What gives you hope? What comes to mind?

[Nikki Giovanni]

Well, see, I like the people, first of all. I've always been fond of the people. I really do, of course, enjoy the food. I'm an American, and I really, really like what we're doing in the black communities. I wish we had more resources because I would like to see the community having better housing, better schools. You know, it's just some basic things that we know they need. But I love what they're doing with rap. I love what they're doing with the music. I love what they're doing to bring their spirits up. And I think that that's. Again, this is something that I think the world benefits from. And of course, I'm a fan of travel. So, you know, you want to see. You want to see everybody traveling back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. And I think that that's important. I enjoy that. But I also like my friends. I'm just trying to be a good writer, and I'm not trying to change the world, but I'm trying to. When I do say something, trying to make sense out of it.

[Interviewer/Host]

Here's something you wrote that I loved you writing is a conversation with reading, a dialogue with thinking. I really get that too. I get that, actually, that dialogue with thinking, talking to you as well, that that's how you live.

[Nikki Giovanni]

Well, you got to, you know, as I say to my students, and again, I hate to keep referring like that, but I'm always telling my students, you're your first reader. So when you write something, the main person that has to be pleased with it is you. You know, writers don't stand on the corner. And it's important that the young writers realize that you're not writing so that you can write a best seller. You're not writing so that it can be turned into a movie. You're not doing any of that. You're writing to tell the truth and you're writing to satisfy that in you that says, I have this truth to share and you have to be proud of that.

[Interviewer/Host]

Well, Nikki Giovanni, I'm glad, very glad that you've shared your truth. And it's been such a pleasure to spend this time with you in conversation. Thank you so much.

[Nikki Giovanni]

Thank you. It's been fun.

[Poetry Reader]

I know my upper arms will grow flabby. It's true of all the women in my family. I know that the purple veins, like dead fish in the sand, will dot my legs one day and my hands will wither while my hair turns grayish white. I know that one day my teeth will move when my lips smile and a flutter of hair will appear below my nose. I hope my skin doesn't change to those blotchy colors. I hope my shoulder finds a head that needs nesting and my feet find a footstool after a good soaking with Epsom salts. I hope I die warmed by the life that I tried to live.

[Krista Tippett]

Nikki Giovanni is a University Distinguished professor in the English Department at Virginia Tech. Some of her best known collections from which the readings in this show were taken include Quilting the Black Eyed Pea,

[Interviewer/Host]

Black Feeling, Black Talk, Black Judgment, and

[Krista Tippett]

the Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni. Special thanks this week to Virginia Fowler at Virginia Tech and Beth Ives at Harper Audio for granting us permission to use Nikki Giovanni's poetry. The On Being Project is located on Dakota Land. Our lovely theme music is provided and composed by Zoe Keating. And the last voice that you hear singing at the end of our show is Cameron. On Being is an independent nonprofit production of the On Being Project. It is distributed to public radio stations by WNYC Studios. I created this show at American Public Media. Our funding partners include the Fetzer Institute, helping to build the Spiritual foundation for a loving World. Find them at Fetzer.org, calliopeia foundation, dedicated to reconnaissance, reconnecting ecology, culture and spirituality supporting organizations and initiatives that uphold a sacred relationship with life on Earth. Learn [e-mail], the George family foundation in support of the Civil Conversations Project the Osprey Foundation, a catalyst for empowered, healthy and fulfilled lives and the Lilly Endowment, an Indianapolis based, private family foundation dedicated to its founders interests in religion, community development and education.

[Interviewer/Host]

On Bing is produced by On Being

[Poetry Reader]

Studios in Minneapolis, Minnesota.