I wanna be like Nikki Giovanni when I'm 65

Nikki Giovanni, back in the day and now

Last night I saw Nikki Giovanni at a Talking Volumes event (links to the audio of the event) at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul. I have loved Giovanni for over a quarter of a century. She writes and speaks The Truth. And she's funny as hell.

I became a huge Giovanni fan in my early twenties, which was during the late 70's (yes, that's how long ago a quarter of a century is). My favorite poem back then, "Rituals," from her 1972 collection, My House, is still a favorite today. An excerpt:

..."wedding rituals have always intrigued me
and i'd swear to friends i wouldn't say goddam not even
once no matter what neither would i give a power
sign but would even comb my hair severely
back and put that blue shit under my eyes
i swear i always wanted to be in a wedding."

Last time I saw her perform was in 1989. I know this because I have an autographed copy of her first book of poetry for children, Vacation Time. I asked her to autograph it for my son, then aged five. It took 15 years, however, to get him interested in Giovanni, when I shared All Eyez on U with him, a poem dedicated to Tupac (2Pac) Shakir (the poem is in her award-winning 1997 collection Love Poems). Here's an excerpt:

..."I saw them murder Emmett Till I saw them murder Malcolm X
I saw them murder
Martin Luther King
I witnessed them shooting Rap Brown I saw them beat LeRoi Jones
I saw them fill their jails I see them burning churches
not me
never me
I do not believe this is some sort of mouth action
This is some sort of political action and they picked well
they picked the brightest freshest fruit from the tallest tree
what a beautiful boy
but he will not go away
as Malcolm did not go away
as Emmett Till did not go away..."

Thanks to that one poem, my son and I, 26 years apart in age, are now both Giovanni fans, and she helped deepen our ongoing conversations about rap and hip hop. That's one of the many reasons I love her. She is always fiercely relevant.

The blogger 9 to 5 Poet has a great summary of last night's event, which was a both an interview and some poetry reading. When you read that summary you will learn, if you didn't already know, that Giovanni has a tattoo on her arm that says "Thug Life" in honor of Tupac, who she embraces as a poet for our time. Not a lot of folks who are over 60 -- or over 40 or over 50 -- could pull that off (both the poem and the tattoo) with authenticity, but she does. The high school kids in the audience loved her, and so did the rest of us.

I like to find women who are ten or more years older than me who I can point to and say, "that's how I want to be as I age." Nikki's on my list. Check out Giovanni and some other amazing African American women writing on midlife in Age Ain't Nothing but a Number: Black Women Explore Midlife.

Her most recent poetry collection, Bicycles: Love Poems is just out. An excerpt from one of the poems, "Your Shower:"

I wish Icould be

Your Shower

I would bubble

Your hair

Tickle my way

Down to your lips

Across your shoulders

And over your back...

I wanna be like Nikki Giovanni when I'm 65. I wanna want to be somebody's shower. That sensual. That alive.