DATE: Sunday, March 2, 1997                 TAG: 9702200257

SECTION: COMMENTARY              PAGE: J2   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Book Review 

SOURCE: BY LYNN DEAN HUNTER 

                                            LENGTH:   70 lines

UNEXPECTED TRITENESS DULLS POETIC TRUTH FROM GIOVANNI

LOVE POEMS

NIKKI GIOVANNI

William Morrow. 96 pp. $12.

Love Poems, a slim red-and-white Valentine volume of new and old poetry by Virginia Tech's Nikki Giovanni, drifts from sweet to syrupy, and back again. Some of these 50-odd poems sound like sentiments in greeting cards:

``Rain has drops Sun has shine

``Moon has beams That make you mine . . . ''

Others are cliches strung in 4/4 time, as if waiting for a tune:

``if you've got the key

then i've got the door

let's do what we did

when we did it before . . . ''

It's hard to believe this verse is from the pen of the same woman who, in a 1982 book preface, wrote, ``Art . . . and by necessity, artists, are on the cutting edge . . . of change.'' Surely one can expect more of contemporary poets, a breed of wordsmiths whose avowed purpose is to capture truth with words.

Expecting more, the reader hunts through Love Poems, looking for the poet's ``truth.'' Here and there, one finds a gleaming line, a crystalline image, a very personal metaphor.

``A Simple Declaration of Love'' evokes, in its lingering consonants and slow rhythm of trochees and dactyls, the lover's timeless longing for sight of the beloved:

``In the reddish gray of morning just before the night concedes I know the silhouette of Sunflowers turning their heads to the east . . .''

A personal battle underlies ``Cancers (not necessarily a love poem).'' In 1995, Giovanni was diagnosed with lung cancer. The poem describes the disease with deceptive dispassion:

``Cancers are a serious condition. . . . attacking internal organs/ . . . eating/

``them away . . . or clumping lumps . . . together . . .

``The blood vessels carry . . . cancerous cells . . . to all body parts . .

``would be the term . . . but this is not necessarily a love poem . . . ''

Giovanni has published 14 previous books of poetry and prose exploring and honoring the African-American experience. She has also written several poetry books for children, numerous articles, and a book, Racism 101, which discusses racism in academia.

Born in Knoxville, Tenn., in 1943, Nikki Giovanni received a BA from Fisk University in 1967. She wrote radical poetry during the Black Power movement of the late 1960s, and began to find an audience. Always a passionate activist, Giovanni gradually changed to a more individualistic political stance, sometimes bringing harsh criticism on herself. In 1985, an attempt was made on her life because she refused to support the boycott on travel to South Africa.

Giovanni, named ``Woman of the Year'' four times by leading magazines, is now receiving recognition for her contributions to the preservation and future of African-American poetry. In 1996, she edited Shimmy Shimmy Shimmy Like My Sister Kate, an anthology of poems from the Harlem Renaissance. A recent New York Times article cites Giovanni as a main inspiration for the new ``spoken-word' school'' of poetic, a heavily rhythmed poetry derived from rap, written to be performed aloud, rather than read.

Although the writing in Love Poems is far from the ``cutting edge of change,'' the poet lives a life that redefines just where the cutting edges are. MEMO: Lynn Dean Hunter is a short-story writer and poet and associate

fiction editor of "The Crescent Review." She lives in Virginia Beach.

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