Nikki Giovanni & Writing

Ever since I decided to give my poetry some serious consideration as a craft, an art, I have unconsciously (till yesterday) been reading a lot of poetry. And I see it everywhere. I hear it in peoples everyday conversations. I notice it in my own. Music now seems even more poetic for me than it did before. My sleep is constantly interrupted by thoughts I want to write down but I am defiant and I lie in bed awake in silence or I grab my ipod. Occasionally, like this morning, I oblige and wake up mid sleep to write things down. This is the writer's affliction and anguish: when the impulse arises or you feel an inkling that a thought is taking shaping in words and something creative is about to form, you obey. It's like having to purge, you feel sick until you do so.

My point is that I've been reading a lot of poetry and I am going to share a lot of it on this blog though not as a part of my Poems for 72 Days series. Although I intend to share some of my closest friends poetry as part of that effort, I generally don't want to use other people's writing as a cop out of doing due diligence to a promise I made to myself.

So below is a poem I came across yesterday. I found it incredibly profound and have been thinking about the ideas in the poem ever since.

It is Nikki Giovanni's poem called Poem For A Lady Whose Voice I Like. 

Poem for A Lady Whose Voice I Like
By Nikki Giovanni

so he said: you ain’t got no talent   

    if you didn’t have a face   

    you wouldn’t be nobody

and she said: god created heaven and earth   

    and all that’s Black within them

so he said: you ain’t really no hot shit   

    they tell me plenty sisters   

    take care better business than you

and she said: on the third day he made chitterlings   

    and all good things to eat   

    and said: “that’s good”

so he said: if the white folks hadn’t been under   

    yo skirt and been giving you the big play

    you’d a had to come on uptown like everybody else

and she replied: then he took a big Black greasy rib

    from adam and said we will call this woeman and her   

    name will he sapphire and she will divide into four parts   

    that simone may sing a song

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