Interview with Nikki Giovanni | Sound Authors Radio

January 2, 2009

Dr. Kent: Welcome to Sound Authors! Its thanksgiving weekend and I’ve got three great guests on the show today. The first guest is Nikki Giovanni. She is the author of The Grasshopper Song and Aesop’s Tale Revisited. It’s a gorgeous book and she’s a well acclaimed poet. The other two guests on the show later on in half an hour we’ll be speaking with Nadia Fultz-Webber. She’ll be speaking about a book called 24-Hours of Christian Television. It’s a highly amusing book where she watched 24 straight hours of Christian television and wrote about it. My last guest on the show will be a musician, his name is Dan Goldman and he’s got some intriguing music. So my first guest on the show is Nikki Giovanni. She’s written a book called the Grasshopper Song. It’s just her latest in a long string of books. She’s an award winning poet, has more than a dozen honorary doctorate awards among many other acclaims. Welcome to the show Nikki Giovanni.

Nikki Giovanni: Hello, how are you?

Dr. Kent: I’m great, how are you doing today?

Nikki Giovanni: I’m doing really well. It’s the day after thanksgiving and it’s about thanksgiving and about it all.

Dr. Kent: Did you eat enough yesterday?

Nikki Giovanni: Oh we had a wonderful meal. I had my only other living relative came down so it was good for her to be here with me and we had a good time.

Dr. Kent: Tell me a little bit about your latest book The Grasshopper Song. It’s gorgeous, absolutely stunning visually and the storyline.

Nikki Giovanni: Well thank you. It’s a pleasure to once again be working with ###. We worked together on The Genie and I and I’ve always admired his work and he won honors for The Inside Outside Window, the third year that my book Rosa took the honor, he won the medal. We took honors for the book on Rosa Parks called Rosa, so this is the first time the Cal Decamp honors and medalist have worked together. But I thought it was wonderful because I’m an artist and I remember when my grandfather who loved Aesop’s Fables and he’d always read them to me, I think he would want you to get a different story when he told them but you know the Grasshopper would sleep and the ant would go on and get the rubber and then in the winter the grasshopper didn’t have anything and the ant said you should have worked harder.

It just always seemed so ungrateful for the ants to treat the grasshopper that way and as I got older it became more offensive because people kept dealing with this story as if it made sense and it didn’t. And it made me upset because I felt didn’t grasshopper do anything? And then thinking about the importance of music, what I ended up doing as you know; if you’ve got the book there. The first line of the book is Jimmy the Grasshopper was furious. So what he decided to do was he goes to the ants and they put him out and he decides to do the American thing; he decides to sue. So he goes to the law firm of Robin, Robin, Robin and Wren, which is the best law firm in the meadow and he said I want to sue the grasshopper and they say what for?

And of course I had to give a shout out to Aretha Franklin because I’m a big Aretha Franklin fan so he says R E S P E C T and Harry Robin says I don’t know how you can get your respect but if we take this case we can get you half the harvest. So we’re going to bring in the importance of its going to turn on what is a contract and of course we as Americans tend to think of contracts as things that we sign and that as, for example, The Constitution of the United States is a contract and yet our government is based not on the contract, but on the compact. It’s based on the Mayflower Compact that when the pilgrims came here, before they set foot ashore, they had a meeting to decide who would mutually take care of each other.

They would form a compact making of course Massachusetts, Kentucky and Virginia all the commonwealths and that too is the same thing. If laws for example, when people were upset about what happened with Katrina a couple of years ago, it was not a question of did you have a contract with Allstate or something, its that we have a compact with each other and we help each other. We know that music is soothing and one of the most important things and I laugh because I lived in New York. I’m not living there now but I lived in New York and the office that I went to was on the 102nd floor. And if you’re in a black box based on somebody’s idea of how you move from one state to the other, you can panic and a lot of people do. So what we do in order to solve it, in order to soothe them, in order to make them know that they are safe we play music. That’s why we have so called elevator music.

We don’t need escalator music and we don’t have stair music. We have elevator music because people panic. We know that the ants do not have a voice so the only voice that they’re going to get is going to come from the grasshopper who makes the music that lets them create the cadence that allows them to bring the harvest in. So I had a good time with it. I wanted kids to understand how we solve disputes. I could’ve had the grasshopper of course go out and get an AK-47 or a hand grenade and bomb the ants and he would’ve felt better because they would’ve been dead but nothing would have changed.

And we know that violence is not the answer. We did not have a civil rights situation here in that we’re not going to have the grasshopper was not going to go and picket the ants. What he’s going to do is the American thing, he’s going to sue. And an impartial judge, a jury of the peers of the ants is going to make a judgment and I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the testimony; he’s the plaintiff so the kids get to know the plaintiff, the defendant; kids get to understand how we solve these things, how we work these things out. Of course when I read it I take it around to the schools and for the grasshopper they’re like yeah the ants were being mean and they were.

Dr. Kent: Wow. Tell me, how do you go about writing? You’ve written nine children’s books now. Of course you’ve gotten awards for Rosa and you’re an acclaimed poet. You teach, you’ve taught for a very long time at Virginia Tech, you’ve done CDs. What’s the difference for you between all of those things and then writing for children?

Nikki Giovanni: First of all I never thought the children would accept the genre. I think the children are just little people and we teach them and they teach us. So you have to be willing to enter into a world that essentially is a fair world and also kids are great. I believe that but I think that with kids its not inherently are prone to fairness. So all of my books deal with children and we also did Lincoln and Douglass with Brian Collier and I love working with Brian. All of my books try to say what’s going to be fair here?

And how does this work out and of course it’s a children’s book so we always have to have “and they lived happily ever after” and I think that’s good too because if the future isn’t hopeful then what’s the point? so I don’t talk down to anybody, its just not something I’m going to do and I talk to children like I would talk to you or my dog who I am so pleased is being very kind. Sometimes I get on the phone and she just begins to yap because she’s jealous and crazy. But again I’ll say Alice, please be quiet and you say please, please, please and then like Al Capone said, you get more with please and a whack on the behind than you do with please alone. But you try to be polite to everybody, try to treat everybody the same.

Dr. Kent: So let’s talk about politics for a second. I’m very hopeful right now with the transition team and with Barack Obama in power. I was a very big supporter of him; what’s your take on politics right now?

Nikki Giovanni: Well I was thrilled with the election. I live here in Virginia and I was absolutely marvelously thrilled that we in German County, which is where I live, actually did what we were supposed to do. We carried our part of the state. The rest of the southwest of course is pretty much republican; nothing wrong with that and the eastern coast and so Virginia went blue. I’m a Tennessean by birth and I grew up in Ohio so I really felt that everybody sees that we need a change, and president elect Obama is not just an intelligent man because actually most of our presidents; I can think of a couple who are not smart, but George Bush is a smart man. I never did buy into that he was stupid.

He did what he wanted to do, I just disagreed with it. But Barack is not just smart, he’s within himself. So he doesn’t mind surrounding himself with extremely smart people. I don’t think anybody can look at this proposed cabinet as it is enfolding and not recognized we have a very confident man that we are going to have people in there who are not “yes” people. People who will say Mr. President, what do you think about this or what do you think about that? And I think that’s good and his first appointment of course was Emmanuel so you knew and I think everybody respects it and in the Democratic Party certainly respects him. I think that’s good, that he’s going to have strong, smart, forward looking people.

Dr. Kent: I remember four years ago saying about Obama after I heard him in the 2004 speech saying man, wouldn’t it be amazing if that guy were president, but it will never happen.

Nikki Giovanni: Well obviously 51% of the people agreed with you! No, it’s nice to have a president who’s articulate though and I said I never, and I don’t think George Bush is dumb, but he is not an articulate man and it’s so nice to have a president who actually speaks in sentences and who pronounces words as they were intended.

Dr. Kent: Right and there’s a little bit of that factor, even with Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, there’s kind of a buddy-buddy thing. You could sit down and have a beer with someone. Joe the Plumber in fact, and I think Obama does appeal to people but he’s in my lifetime the first real articulate president and I’m very excited about it. So what role do you think race played in it? I didn’t vote for him because he was black, I voted for him because he’s Barack Obama, but what role do you think race played?

Nikki Giovanni: I think maybe in the minority in terms of the black American community, he didn’t run a racial campaign. You can’t say it wasn’t a factor because you could look at him and he’s a black man you know but I don’t think that’s what happened here. Barack Obama ran a campaign on competency, on hope, on intelligence and I don’t know him of course, but I also don’t think that anybody thinks oh lets go have a beer, lets kick back with Barack; I don’t think that’s going to happen. But I don’t want a president that I would kick back with and I’m pretty smart and forward looking.

There’s something wrong but I don’t need a leader that’s my friend. I need a leader that can go and give a vision and protect not just me because anybody can protect me, I’m easy to protect. Put a fence up and put a couple of pit bulls out there to protect this earth and I think that’s so important, that we need somebody with a vision, not of America at this point but of the planet. And I think that’s what people voted for. When we start to talk about clean air, when we start to talk about renewable energy, we’re talking about the life of this planet.

And we need that; its not just will Americans have cheaper cars or better cars or whatever. It’s a question of how do we transport people. How do we utilize this great human energy that we have. How do we help each other? How do we reach out to Africa? How do we reach out to China? And of course the great sadness as we’re all aware that’s happening in Mumbai right now. How do we reach out to those people? Just say, this is the way I want to talk to you, I want to talk to you through an AK-47. That’s not a good conversation and I think that we can do better.

Dr. Kent: At the same time I don’t feel like, I’m not a big beer drinker myself but I don’t feel like I could sit down with Barack Obama and drink a beer but I do feel personally attached to him. I cried during that speech I mean I can’t imagine, I don’t know why I did. You know, he started speaking and I was happy and then all of a sudden I was weeping.

Nikki Giovanni: I got to say this as a black woman; we’ve waited through 43 first ladies and we now have a first lady that has a behind and I’m thinking all the black women on earth are excited!

Dr. Kent: And I’m excited about not only that but man this woman is incredibly intelligent. Barack Obama says she was the one that was supposed to take office, you know?

Nikki Giovanni: I’m not sure that I buy into that.

Dr. Kent: No but I’m excited to have a really intelligent; I mean of course Hillary Clinton is powerful but I mean Michelle Obama is in a different category. She’s a real brilliant person.

Nikki Giovanni: Again, I don’t know the Obama’s and it’s nice to have two little girls who look so cute in the white house. So I think its going to be fun. I think that it’s uplifting; I was watching as were you as they went around the world with this election and you could feel it all over. You could feel that somehow a cloud was lifting.

Dr. Kent: Yep, and it’s a hopeful thing when we see all these things happening in the world. Now let’s talk about for a second; you’ve written more than a dozen poetry books that are called serious poetry books and back in the beginning you talked about black feeling, black talk, black judgment. What is the evolution of your thinking, of your theory all of that, how has that changed over 40 years?

Nikki Giovanni: I think not a lot. The divining rod, if I can use that metaphor has been that I try to be an honest person. That honesty is important to me so as you learn things and as the world turns there’s no way to look at the world and not know that things have changed. So as things change you try to make the adjustment. I have a navigator, they finally gave me one on my phone and when I say I want to go to Third Street, if I make the wrong turn my navigator voice comes on and says adjusting direction. And I love that about that voice because as we are moving through this life you do make turns. Whether right or wrong, that’s not the point, but things happen and as things happen you must make the adjustment. I like to think that I’m intelligent enough to recognize when we must make another step and I can change with it.

Dr. Kent: Talk about your newest poetry. You’ve got a book called Acolytes coming out at some point?

Nikki Giovanni: Oh yeah, Acolytes I wrote which is really a beautiful book. My mother died during 2005 and I literally started that book with my feet propped on my mother’s hospital bed because I was very close to mommy and I was just being incredibly sad. You have to be a little braver than I was right at that point being because I’m crying and every time my mother opened her eyes she’s seeing her baby daughter crying and its like okay, this has to stop. You have to be stronger; you can’t let her feel like you can’t handle this. She was doing the hard work I was just losing her; she was the one that was dying.

So I thought okay I’m a writer so I went home and got my laptop and I came back because I sat with mommy and I came back and I just started writing. So this just kind of flowed and if you’re looking at the book the book is a book to me. It’s a great loss because I lost mommy but my sister died six weeks later, my friend Rosa Parks died, my friend Edna Lewis was 86 and Edna died, Coretta King died, Nina died and so all of a sudden I was losing people that I had known and loved and so I just kind of again in trying to define how do we go forward I literally went from being the baby in the family, which I was, to being an elder. Because all of a sudden we wiped out; my Aunt Ann died and it was just like my goodness this is incredibly sad. But I was saying also to myself which is still true.

In defining myself I never did want to be the leader. I still don’t, I think that’s a bad position. In other words biblically speaking I would never want to be Jesus; I would always prefer to be John the Baptist. I would always want to be the one who says it is coming. Both of them are going to get killed; ones going to lose his head and ones going to be on the cross – everybody’s going to die so its not like you’re escaping anything but its always nice to be the one to say its coming, something is coming. There’s good news on the way and that’s what Acolytes do; they clean up before the priest, they make sure that the people are ready to receive the gifts.

Dr. Kent: And poets really are prophets in a way and here’s another question about that. It seems like such a personal collection dealing with coping with death and loss in the family something that a lot of us deal with as we grow older. How do you balance a book about Rosa Parks, a book of somewhat political poetry, a book of personal feelings? Is it all grouped in the same category in your brain or do you sit down in your office and have different projects in different categories?

Nikki Giovanni: Well I don’t think so but everything isn’t a story and again Acolytes is one of and I was so pleased about that one. The imagery made it such a beautiful book and I love it so much but there were stories in Acolytes. As sad as I was, as sad as I actually remain in many respects, I’m not the only person whose mom has died. So there’s a story there that I can share; I reach maybe somebody who has lot their mother and then we can say oh I understand. Whether we’re friends or not; if I were a social worker I would talk about it to my friends but I’m a writer so I talk about it to people who are kind enough to read me.

That’s what art does. We reach out and so hopefully that’s what a book like that will do because its not psychotherapy. I say that to my students. Its not a question of you have a problem so let’s write about it. It’s a question of how do you share this and who else can enter that story? So these were stories that are universal; I mean it happened to me but I’m not the only person on earth who ever had a mother, a sister and an aunt who died, or a good friend that died. But it does open a door for other people to come in, to enter the story that we can share a feeling. Even without knowing each other.

I don’t know all of my readers of course and people will pick up the book and maybe say well this makes me feel better. We were talking about Barack; one of the things about the president is that when you hear him speak he makes you feel better. And we know that whatever else it is that human beings do, we function on feelings. Feeling is everything.

Dr. Kent: In your career, what has been your proudest achievement?

Nikki Giovanni: Well that’s a hard question; I don’t eulogize myself and I won’t summarize myself. It’s a bad habit so I won’t do it.

Dr. Kent: So let me ask you about my personal curiosity were peaked of course when you started talking about Nina Simone and Rosa Parks and Coretta King. Let’s say you’ve been friends with some important and really influential people. How has that experience been in your life?

Nikki Giovanni: Coretta King was not what you would call a friend. We knew each other of course but Rosa Parks was a friend and I loved her very much and I still do love her. Being a friend with an icon like that is to be quiet, to let them know that whatever they say is not going any place else. Not that there are any secrets; Ms. Parks didn’t have any secrets that I know of but to be a friend; to be there for them. You have to quit thinking of them as icons and Nina of course was my age and so Nina you could hang out with. Not literally because she didn’t drink and I don’t drink but you could have a beer with Nina Simone, but you didn’t have a beer with Mrs. Parks. No, that wasn’t going to happen. Being in her presence was always a privilege. It’s like I met Queen Elizabeth and we’re not friends I just met her but you know being in the presence of Elizabeth is a privilege. No matter how fleeting and how structured and being in the presence of Rosa Parks is the same thing. You have to as Rick James said, recognize the Majesty.

Dr. Kent: So let me ask you a question. You teach at Virginia Tech, right?

Nikki Giovanni: Yes. Go Hokies! We’re playing the biggest game of the year tomorrow!

Dr. Kent: I don’t know much about that but its where the shootings happened, correct?

Nikki Giovanni: Well yeah, we were one of the many campuses that experienced tragedies, yes.

Dr. Kent: And it was a horrible, horrible event where among others an elderly professor was killed who I’m sure you knew. What was the personal impact of you on that tragedy?

Nikki Giovanni: That tragedy impacted actually I was going to say America but not so much, it didn’t impact the world and I think that people like me, I did not realize the enormity of it, but the impact of it I’m sure its like the people over in Mumbai right now. It’s something that you can’t put your head around. So once they started to toll the bell for those who had gone and you realized who the 33 were, it was just incredibly sad and so one of the things that we all did here particularly was we leaned on each other and I think that was good.

Some of the students who were not injured or anything like that but everybody knew at least one person, probably more, but some of the students their parents came to get them because they were concerned and they took them home. The kids realized they couldn’t stay at home because nobody at home knew what they was going through so they ended up coming back. At least when you went into Kroger’s or you went into get your donuts; everybody knew what you were going through. So we were able to support and we continue.

Last year we closed school; we’re not going to close school anymore because events have moved on; our memorial is up in the field and the students can visit that and I was privileged to have been invited to anchor the convocation and I didn’t realize, it just didn’t hit me I suppose that it was an international feed. I’m glad it didn’t because it would’ve made me nervous. I knew that George Bush was there, the president was in and all the congressional, the caucus was in, all the senators, the governor and so you were standing there looking at those people but I was looking at the kids because I know them; I teach them.

Fortunately the words came as they should have, as they did and I was able to offer some comfort. I didn’t realize how big it was until I started getting responses from Korea and China and of course my friends in Australia and in France. So my phone was ringing from friends saying we heard you and it was like oh my gosh, but I was glad I didn’t know that because it probably would’ve made me nervous.

Dr. Kent: I was listening on national public radio that day and there’s such a big impact of poetry on peoples lives and one thing about your career is there is this pain of Virginia Tech but that pain was in the civil rights movement, that pain is in the war on terror or in all of these things. What’s your take on the state of the world right now?

Nikki Giovanni: I think it’s a good time to be alive. I don’t like the term, I’m not correcting your English believe me, but I don’t like the idea of the war on terror because what’s the difference? War is war and we have to find another way to approach life, to approach our possibilities and I think one of them is we have to quit being afraid, which is again why I’m so pleased right now and I think I’ll continue to be with Barack Obama because you know that he’s a Steady Eddie. You know that he’s not going to panic and then make everybody else panic. He’s not going to be mean, none of that bring it on, none of that we’re going to bomb the crap out of them; none of that.

And its time that we stopped thinking in those terms. I’ve had lung cancer 13 years ago so every day that I get is a very precious day to me but people say to me, oh you beat cancer. Well, you don’t beat cancer; you find a way to live with it. you find a way to live with your fears, you find a way to live with disease, you find a way to live with arthritis, you find a way to live with a number of things but you don’t have to live with poverty, you don’t have to live with bad water or bad air, or cows that cant walk to be slaughtered, that somebody’s just killing because they’re trying to make another few bucks off of you; you don’t have to live with unregulated milk, meat or airplanes.

We can do a good job for each other and I think that’s what we have to do. We have to decide that life is not this battle that we’re going to go out and just beat the hell out of everybody but we’re going to find a way to accommodate reasonable demands.

Dr. Kent: Amen!

Nikki Giovanni: That’s what we’re looking for, how do we get out of this pain? But if there were no pain, there would be no joy.

Dr. Kent: It’s been beautiful speaking with you about politics, about tragedy and about your new book. There’s a couple coming out; one is a poetry book called Acolytes and of course that’s very personal poetry; I can’t wait to read that. Then of course the Grasshoppers Song; it is a gorgeous book, man the artwork is so beautiful and the story is so touching and fun. That’s called The Grasshoppers Song; An Aesop’s Tale. It’s been such an honor speaking with Nikki Giovanni. Thank you so much for being here.

Nikki Giovanni: Thank you and happy New Year if I don’t talk to you.

Dr. Kent: Happy new year to you too. My next guest on the show is an author named Nadia Boltz-Webber. She’ll be speaking about a book called 24-hours of Christian Television. This is going to be a kick. I don’t know how she sat through 24 full hours of Christian television. I can take a couple hours of it and I even like some of it but 24 hours? I don’t know. We’ll talk to Nadia Boltz-Webber after this and we’ll have a fun time.

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