THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, January 31, 1996 TAG: 9601310032
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E3 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY SHARON WEINSTEIN
LENGTH: Medium: 63 lines
DON'T BOTHER reading ``The Selected Poems of Nikki Giovanni'' (William Morrow, 292 pp., $20) if you favor placid poems about moonlit nights.
You won't find them in here.
Do read it if you like energetic protest poems, frank talk, sexual unveilings and poems from the gut of an African-American woman who has been on the front lines since the 1960s.
The collection of poems includes work from the Charlottesville poet's first volume of poetry, ``Black Feeling, Black Talk,'' published in 1968, and ranges to ``But Since You Finally Asked,'' a 1993 poem commissioned to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Slave Memorial at Mount Vernon.
With poems about such subjects as black power and black separatism, Giovanni mirrors the volatile, revolutionary spirit of a people who refuse to be defined by others any longer.
She opens a poem titled ``For Saundra'' by saying, ``I wanted to write/a poem/that rhymes/but revolution doesn't lend/itself to be-bopping.''
And she ends it by observing that ``perhaps these are not poetic/ times/at all.''
In her thoughtful forword about Giovanni's poetics, Virginia C. Fowler notes that while Giovanni creates her work out of experiences that are powerfully personal, her poems are grounded ``in the historical moment in which they were written,'' and reflect the nation's past and present.
She writes, Fowler tells us, out of ``consciousness of her identity as a black American'' and in ``recognition of the struggle of black Americans to find a voice that would express themselves and their real-ities.''
Giovanni has written six books of poetry, five books of prose and seven children's books and has edited four books, including the rich and timely ``Grand Mothers: A Multicultural Anthology of Poems, Reminiscences and Short Stories About the Keepers of Our Traditions.'' But she ``denies the power of poetry to change the world.''
Giovanni believes poetry is read by those already in harmony with the poet's vision.
In a 1970 poetry collection, ``Re: Creation,'' Giovanni turns more intimately into her private life. She writes about her son, who ``gave (her)a new name (mommy),'' and about the habit of ``house cleaning,'' which extends to removing those from her life who would drag her down.
The 150 poems collected in ``The Selected Poems of Nikki Giovanni'' reveal the range of Giovanni's moral and artistic concerns over 25 years. You wonder, though, why a retrospective now? Nikki Giovanni is only 52 years old.
There are as many reasons for ``selected works'' as there are poets, but a note in the chronology of Giovanni's life gives pause - last year she underwent ``successful'' surgery for lung cancer.
Giovanni's poems are not for everyone. Sometimes they seem flat and unoriginal on the page. But she works out of an oral tradition, and her poems gain distinctively in power when they are heard.
The reader who shares an emotional base with Giovanni is likely to get the most out of her poetry. She speaks for many who have not yet been able to express their own deepest truths. MEMO: Sharon Weinstein is a professor of English at Norfolk State University
and author of a book of poems, ``Celebrating Absences.'' by CNB