Former University at Albany professor remembers the late Nikki Giovanni, his longtime friend and fellow poet
It had snowed the previous two days and the temperature dipped into the teens. On the morning of Thursday, February 1, 1990, under gray skies and a thick fog, Leonard Slade drove to the Albany airport pick up his longtime friend and fellow poet Nikki Giovanni.
We reached out to Leonard to share his thoughts and memories of Nikki Giovanni, who passed away on Monday at the age of 81.
But first... You may remember from Wednesday's post that it was Leonard, then chair of the University at Albany's Department of African and Afro-American Studies, who was instrumental in bringing Giovanni to campus in 2019.
(Left: Nikki Giovanni and Leonard Slade at the University at Albany Oct. 10, 2019. Paul Grondahl / NYS Writers Institute)
After reading that post, Joyce Dewitt-Parker, the assistant vice president of Student Affairs at UAlbany, reminded us that Giovanni visited the NYS Writers Institute years before this 2019 visit. A quick trip to our files revealed a thick manilla folder labeled "NIKKI GIOVANNI 2/1/90."
Thank you, Joyce.
Indeed, Professor Slade was also involved in this earlier event when Nikki Giovanni gave a reading on Thursday, February 1, 1990, in the UAlbany Performing Arts Center Recital Hall.
Below: A memo detailing the day's itinerary.
After the airport pickup, lunch at the Thruway House, and a visit to WAMC Northeast Public Radio, everyone gathered at the Recital Hall on UAlbany's main campus at 7 p.m. Leonard's introduction began:
"We are honored to have the Voice of America present tonight, as well as the New York State and Community Affairs Network, Channel 8 in the Capital District... This program will be broadcast worldwide.
Nikki Giovanni is here tonight to tell the truth -- to remind us, as one writer said, 'of the compassion and sacrifice and endurance, as the New York State Writers Institute has written on the sheet that some of you received... I could go on and on, but Nikki's poetry speaks for itself. Ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm welcome to the princess of poetry."
From a written transcript of the event in the files, it seems Nikki Giovanni spoke on that February 1990 evening without a prepared text. The transcript notes several occasions when the talk was interrupted by laughter and applause
She first thanked the students in attendance.
"I know this is required, right? It has to be. That many students wouldn't come out for anything."
She railed against lazy academics:
"It is disgraceful that people teach two courses a week that approximate four hours, and the rest of the time they spend picking their nose or diddling their thumbs. I don't know what they do, but I know it's not right, because I know we have these professors -- not only at your school, mine, or whatever -- who never see a professor. Something is wrong with that."
She offered advice to the students:
"... I know this because I'm an old woman [she was 46 at the time], I've been around the block a few times on this one. I know that if you get everything that you think you need, and you're any kind of sane, when you get that last thing you're going to say to yourself 'I need something more.' You're going to recognize it's not the material, it is not the car, it is not the clothes, it is not the house, and it is not your bank account that's going to bring you security and happiness. It is what you are doing to serve humanity.
The sooner you get this other crap out of your way, the more likely it is that you can begin to do what it is that your generation must do, which is serve this planet."
She spoke on the racial issues of the 60s and her time and shared stories of her childhood. Her home had an outhouse.
"...the census was coming around, and they say things 'How many books in your house?' I checked, you know, 500 books. And then they said 'How many toilets?' and I checked 'none.' You know, it's one of those things that people think you're lying. 'What do you mean you don't have a toilet and you have all these books?' I think my parents had their priorities right. We also had a grand piano. You can piss anyplace, but you can't learn to play the piano and you can't learn to read."
And she read her poems "Nikki Rosa" and "I Am She."
We're grateful to Professor Slade for taking the time to answer a few questions about his friend. He replied via email. "Yes, I have been grieving over the loss of my good friend," he wrote. "What a great personal loss to me and a greater loss to our literary world! Permit me to answer your questions as I write with grief."
How long have you known Nikki Giovanni?
I first met Nikki Giovanni at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where I was working on my Ph.D. degree in English in 1971.
She read her poetry with power and beauty. The Krannert Center for the Performing Arts audience was shocked at the rawness of some of her poems. The conservative listeners transcended this realistic portrayal of black life and conditions theme in her poems when the Gospel Choir sang. The choir offered faith as a source of transcendence theme.
Overall, everyone loved the occasion and celebrated the freshness of her poetry with its rich images and conversational rhythms.
What should people know about her?
Everyone should know that she was one of our most powerful writers of the Black Arts Movement. She wrote poems on a variety of subjects with sensitivity and complexity. She wrote of our joys and sorrows, of our hopes and fears, of our harshness in life and gentleness, and of our beauty and ugliness. With empathy, Giovanni touches the souls of people.
Conversely, she castigates those who would forget their blackness. She uses deftly the historic past as a frame of reference to develop her themes. Her conversational rhythms, artistic unity, free verse style in some poems, protest and anger against racial injustice theme, internal conflict within black Americans in our struggle for personal freedom themes, the struggle for racial identity and black pride themes -- all of these bode well for her powerful poetry, which is written with a laconic style and clinical brevity.
In Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day, [her poetry collection published in 1980], Giovanni writes about happiness and unhappiness. In the "Woman Poem," she ends it with unhappiness. She is perturbed over her father's incompetence in caring for his family. Her problems are exacerbated because of the economic disappointment job for a woman is unfulfilled. She is sexually unhappy. Her self-image is a destroyer, and her unhappiness is almost unbearable.
Many readers can relate to her poetry, for Giovanni has empathy for those who cannot adjust to the vicissitudes of life with all of its cruelty and conflict. Readers can relate to her loneliness and
lugubriousness.
In short, Giovanni is masterful in addressing the timeless hunger of the human spirit.
What is the legacy of Nikki Giovanni?
Nikki Giovanni's legacy will be her accessible poetry, which is written with erudition, simplicity, clarity, style, realism, rawness, beauty, ugliness, soul, and grace.
She once said, "Literature is reality." Her poetry will stand the test of time. What a great legacy that will be!
(An embrace between old friends: Leonard Slade and Nikki Giovanni at the University at Albany Oct. 10, 2019. Patrick Dodson / UAlbany)
Woman Poem
you see, my whole life
is tied up
to unhappiness
it’s father cooking breakfast
and me getting fat as a hog
or having no food
at all and father proving
his incompetence
again
i wish i knew how it would feel
to be free
it’s having a job
they won’t let you work
or no work at all
castrating me
(yes it happens to women too)
it’s a sex object if you’re pretty
and no love
or love and no sex if you’re fat
get back fat black woman be a mother
grandmother strong thing but not woman
gameswoman romantic woman love needer
man seeker dick eater sweat getter
fuck needing love seeking woman
it’s a hole in your shoe
and buying lil’ sis a dress
and her saying you shouldn’t
when you know
all too well—that you shouldn’t
but smiles are only something we give
to properly dressed social workers
not each other
only smiles of i know
your game sister
which isn’t really
a smile
joy is finding a pregnant roach
and squashing it
not finding someone to hold
let go get off get back don’t turn
me on you black dog
how dare you care
about me
you ain’t got no good sense
cause i ain’t shit you must be lower
than that to care
it’s a filthy house
with yesterday’s watermelon
and monday’s tears
cause true ladies don’t
know how to clean
it’s intellectual devastation
of everybody
to avoid emotional commitment
“yeah honey i would’ve married
him but he didn’t have no degree”
it’s knock-kneed mini-skirted
wig wearing died blond mamma’s scar
born dead my scorn your whore
rough heeled broken nailed powdered
face me
whose whole life is tied
up to unhappiness
cause it’s the only
for real thing
i
know
By Nikki Giovanni, first published in 1968
Video: Nikki Giovanni at the University at Albany, 2019
Videos:
In November, 1971, Nikki Giovanni joined James Baldwin for a wide-ranging conversation aired on the PBS program Soul!, an entertainment/variety/talk show that promoted black art and culture and political expression. The video was recorded in London and it was later published under the title A Dialogue in 1973.
During the talk, Baldwin had this to say about the condition of being a writer: "The very first thing a writer has to face is that he cannot be told what to write. You know, nobody asked me to be a writer; I chose it. Well, since I’m a man I have to assume I chose it; perhaps in fact, I didn’t choose it. But in any case, the one thing you have to do is try to tell the truth. And what everyone overlooks is that in order to do it — when the book comes out it may hurt you — but in order for me to do it, it had to hurt me first."