At one point last year, when Nikki Giovanni was giving a talk at a high school in Washington state, a student made a comment about her stage presence.
It had been classic Giovanni: waving her arms and going off on tangents and sprawling explanations.
Giovanni answered that there was hardly any point in doing a live appearance if the person wasn’t . . . lively. “If you’re going to read me a speech, mail it to me,” Giovanni said.
She might well have said the same thing about audio, given her utterly charming and engaging debut on “The Nikki Giovanni Collection,” which she reads — no, performs — for Harper (2 hours, $18.95 on cassette, $22 on CD).
This is an audio exclusive. The cover photo — Giovanni in a dark jacket, smiling at the camera — is the same as what’s on her latest hardback “Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea: Poems and Not Quite Poems.” A few poems are the same, too, but that’s where the similarities end.
The audio’s unabridged poems span her career, from 1968, when she self-published her first volume of poetry, “Black Feeling, Black Talk,” to the present. She now teaches English at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg and holds more than a dozen honorary doctorates.
The poems span her passions, from racism and Rosa Parks and Emmett Till to love and motherhood to boxes of yummy chicken. The poems are worth the price all by themselves. Giovanni reads with gobs of energy and enthusiasm. Hers is the poetry of plainspeak. None of the metaphorical mumbo jumbo that baffles so many of us.
Her hopeful view of the future: “Maybe one day the Jewish community will be at rest, the Christian community will be content, the Moslem community will be at peace, and all the rest of us will get great meals on holy days and learn new songs and sing in harmony. . . .”
I write without line breaks because it’s impossible to tell, in the spoken version, where they are. Each poem is like a mini-essay. It’s conversational, accessible poetry. There’s no obvious cadence, although there’s a sort of underlying pulse that provides momentum.
Many are a bit of an emotional roller coaster too — first funny, then pointed, or vice versa.
She writes that she knows love is the basis for all relationships and trust follows, “and not the other way around, because if trust was the basis, there would be world peace and safe international travel.”
What really takes this recording over the top is Giovanni’s impromptu, sometimes impish, even almost kooky commentary, explaining the context of some of the poems.
Giovanni exudes charm and warmth, fervor and vigor. This recording is audio at its best — the best of what’s in print, and then a little more.
