ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, March 7, 1997 TAG: 9703070013
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KEVIN KITTREDGE THE ROANOKE TIMES
In the last two years, poet Nikki Giovanni has completed a mountain of work, won a major literary award - and heard the words nobody wants to hear.
She calls it her "valentine" - with reason. For the past few weeks, Nikki Giovanni has been signing "Love Poems," her most recent collection of poetry, at bookstores around the country.
Like a jet-stream cupid, Giovanni has touched down in Atlanta, in Alabama - in Los Angeles and Houston and Dallas.
Call it the valentine express. Call it a promotional tour if you must.
Whatever you call it, the whirlwind journey has left the 53-year-old poet with a fever ache in her bones that does nothing to chill the enthusiasm in her voice.
"I'm really very, very fond of the book," Giovanni said in a telephone interview from her Christiansburg home recently, where she was spending a few days recovering from the flu. "It's a really pretty book. It's red and white.
A $12 valentine, it must be said. Though the price is hardly stratospheric for a hard-cover book.
In any event, Giovanni has plenty of reasons to sound happy.
There is the new book, for one, of which she speaks with obvious pride.
And then there is the Langston Hughes Award. The national literary award, given by the City College of New York in honor of the famous Harlem poet and playwright, was given to Giovanni at the college's Langston Hughes Festival late last year. A speaker there said of Giovanni's work, "Although her poetry remains simple and direct, it continues to speak forcefully to the desires, heartache and rage of the ordinary African-American."
The award puts the Virginia Tech professor and author of 20-some books in select company. Previous winners include James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Ralph Ellison, Chinua Achebe and Alice Walker.
It does not make her rich. "It's not a money-prize," Giovanni said. "The best prizes aren't. ... It's very nice."
And finally, there is the fact that Giovanni feels blessed to be here at all these days. Two years ago, she was diagnosed with lung cancer. Doctors removed part of one lung.
Giovanni said there is no sign the cancer has returned since then. She is even playing tennis again. "Hopefully everything works out," she said. "I'm writing about it."
Incidentally, the former heavy smoker and smokers' rights advocate has puffed her last cigarette. She stopped on the day of her surgery - Feb. 7, 1995.
"I'm slow, but I'm not dumb," explained Giovanni, whose house is now a smoke-free zone. Still, "I have not joined the anti-smokers," she insisted. "Something's going to get all of us."
In any event, add the 1996 publication of "Selected Poems," and throw in "Grand Mothers," the Giovanni-edited anthology published in 1994, and it has been an eventful few years for Southwest Virginia's best-known poet. There are also two children's books, "The Sun is So Quiet," and "The Genie in the Jar," illustrated by Chris Raschka, and a CD on the way of Giovanni reading her own work - "Nikki Giovanni, Live in Philadelphia."
"Quite frankly, I got worried," said Giovanni, of the burst of activity. She said after the initial diagnosis of cancer, she was in a hurry to get some projects out of the way, just in case.
"Love Poems" spans nearly 30 years, from 1968 to the present. The poems in the volume are undated, but the lustier ones seem a product of the days before the poet's blood cooled; others, such as "All Eyez on U," written for the murdered young rap singer Tupac Shakur, were composed as recently as last fall. Shakur, known for his scrapes with the law and the sometimes violent lyrics in his rap songs, died in September. Giovanni's poem reads:
"if those who lived by the sword died by the sword there would be no white men on earth
if those who lived on hatred died on hatred there would be no KKK..."
Most of the poems in "Love Poems," as befits the subject, are in a gentler mode.
They range in tone from serious to silly - in topic from lovers to mothers to August "in the barefoot South."
Some are poignant, and some just fun - like the daffy "I Wrote a Good Omelet":
"I wrote a good omelet ... and ate a hot poem..
after loving you
Buttoned my car ... and drove my coat home...in the rain"
Of her own love life, Giovanni has little to say, other than she has never been married. Giovanni has a son, Thomas, who is attending law school at Georgetown University.
The book ends with a love poem to the seasons, dedicated to Giovanni's 80-year old uncle, Clinton.
It is a fit ending, perhaps, for a book by a writer who has seen more seasons herself than she's likely to see again.
Of her recent illness, Giovanni knows there are no guarantees. Dealing with cancer, she said, means living "one step at a time. You take care of yourself. You eat well. A lot of it is the grace of God. You can't get around that."
Giovanni has started a book about her experience, called "A Deer in Headlights" - after the frozen posture deer assume when surprised by the lights of an automobile. The phrase came up in a conversation with her long-time attorney and friend, Gloria Haffer, soon after her illness was diagnosed, Giovanni said.
Haffer, recalled Giovanni, asked her how she felt.
"I said, 'Like a deer in headlights.' She said , 'Well, move.'''
She has.
LENGTH: Long : 103 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Virginia Tech's Nikki Giovanni (inset) and the cover herby CNBlatest book.