The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni (34 page)

The volume was originally divided into two sections: “Night Winds” and “Day Trippers”; “Love: Is a Human Condition” is the first poem of the latter section, which takes its name from the title of a hit single by the Beatles.

“Charting the Night Winds”

This poem constituted the preface of the original volume.

Stanza 4: “Telstar”: Although Telstar was not the first communications satellite, it is undoubtedly the best known. It was launched on July 10, 1962, allowing live television from the United States to be received in France.

Stanza 5: “State to poison Socrates”: The ancient philosopher Socrates (469–399
B.C.E
.) was convicted of corrupting the morals of Athenian youth and espousing religious heresies; he refused all efforts to save his life and drank the fatal hemlock given him by the State. See Plato's
Apology.

Stanza 5: “Copernicus to recant”: Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) is generally considered the founder of modern astronomy. He postulated that the earth rotates on its axis once a day, that it travels around the sun once yearly, and that the sun is the center of the universe. These ideas ran completely counter to the prevailing geocentric ideas of the Middle Ages. Copernicus did not recant; but he also had no interest in publishing his ideas because he was a perfectionist who thought he should test and retest his hypotheses. In fact, Copernicus died without knowing the repercussions of his work. Giovanni probably means Galileo Galilei (1564–1642), who subscribed to Copernicus's theory, ran afoul of the Inquisition, and was convicted of heresy. Not until 1992 did the Catholic Church, through Pope John Paul II, admit to error in its treatment of Galileo—but not to having been wrong.

Stanza 5: “McCarthy”: Joseph R. McCarthy (1908–57), a U.S. senator from Wisconsin who gained notoriety for his witch hunting of suspected “Communists” from 1950 to 1954.

Stanza 5: “I am…many things”: A line from Lewis Carroll's “The Walrus and the Carpenter” in
Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There
(1872).

“Lorraine Hansberry: An Emotional View”

Lorraine Hansberry (1930–65) was a Chicago-born activist and playwright whose
A Raisin in the Sun
was the first play by an African American woman to be produced on Broadway.

Stanza 2: “sculpt David”: The statue
David
is generally considered the greatest work of Michelangelo (1475–1564), the Italian sculptor, poet, and painter.

Stanza 2: “like Charles White”: The African American artist Charles White (1918–79).

Stanza 4: “from 1619”: The first African settlers—numbering
twenty—in North America arrived on August 20, 1619, in Jamestown, Virginia, where they were exchanged by the Dutch ship's captain for food.

Stanza 4: “Little Linda Brown”: Linda Carol Brown (1943–) was born in Topeka, Kansas. When she reached school age, her father, Oliver Brown, tried to enroll her in the all-white Sumner School, the school closest to their home. His name became the name of the plaintiff in what was to be the landmark case
Brown vs. Board of Education,
which challenged the structure of segregation first legalized in 1896.

Stanza 4: “Dr. King”: Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–68).

Stanza 4: “in Montgomery”: The Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955–56), which was sparked by Rosa Parks's refusal to move to the back of the bus provided the occasion for Dr. King's emergence as a Civil Rights leader. Because King was relatively new to Montgomery, having been appointed to the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in 1954, he was considered by experienced members of the NAACP such as E. D. Nixon to be an ideal leader for the boycott (he had no history with the city's white citizens). King was named president of the Montgomery Improvement Association, the organizational force behind the boycott. The boycott was ultimately successful, although not until the case had gone all the way to the Supreme Court, which upheld a lower court's order for the city to desegregate its buses.

Stanza 4: “Emmett Till”: Emmett Louis Till (1941–55). Till, a Chicago boy who was visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi, was violently murdered and his body mutilated by Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam. When Till's mother, Mamie Till Bradley, decided to publicize the photograph of Emmett's body and to hold an open-casket funeral because she wanted “the world to see” what had been done to her son, the world “saw” and was outraged. Till was not the first victim of white southern racism, but he was possibly the most widely recognized, and his death galvanized the Civil Rights movement. The Montgomery Bus Boycott, which began in just months after Till's death in August 1955, was in some ways one of the results of that death.

Stanza 4: “Cuba…during the missile crisis”: The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. After the United States detected the construction of missile launching sites by the Soviet Union in Cuba, President Kennedy ordered a naval blockade to surround Cuba until the Soviets agreed to dismantle the sites.

Stanza 4: “airlifted…to West Berlin”: During the 1948–49 Soviet land and water blockade of West Berlin, the United States and other Western powers airlifted supplies to the city.

“Hands: For Mother's Day”

Stanza 3: “the mother of Emmett Till”: Mamie Till Bradley Mobley (1922–2003). See note to “Lorraine Hansberry,” above.

Stanza 3: “Nancy Reagan”: Nancy Davis Reagan (1921–), wife of Ronald Reagan (1911–), fortieth president of the United States (1981–89). Shortly after he took office, he was shot in an assassination attempt; he recovered quickly.

Stanza 3: “Betty Shabazz”: Activist, nurse, and educator, Betty Shabazz (1936–97) was present when her husband, Malcolm X, was assassinated in the Audubon Ballroom in New York City.

Stanza 3: “Jacqueline Kennedy”: Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis (1929–94) was riding in the limousine with her husband, President John F. Kennedy (1917–63), when he was fatally shot. The images of his widow in a bloodstained pink suit and with her two small children at the funeral are indelibly etched in the memories of several generations of Americans.

Stanza 3: “Coretta King”: Coretta Scott King (1929–), widow of Martin Luther King, Jr., has continued to carry out his mission since his death by assassination in 1968.

Stanza 3: “Ethel Kennedy”: Ethel S. Kennedy (1928–), social activist and humanitarian, was widowed when her husband, the presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy (1925–68), was assassinated.

Stanza 7: “Star Trek's Spock”: Spock, who has a Vulcan father and a human mother, was one of the most popular characters of the original
Star Trek
television series. He was played by Leonard Nimoy.

“This Is Not for John Lennon (and this is not a poem)”

Stanza 2: “it's not about John Lennon”: John Lennon (1940–80), singer and songwriter who some would argue was the creative genius behind the Beatles, was shot and killed outside the Dakota Apartments in New York City.

Stanza 2: “the man who killed him”: Mark David Chapman (1955–) came to New York from Hawaii with the chief aim of killing Lennon. After pleading guilty, he was sentenced to twenty years in prison.

Stanza 2: “Andy Warhol”: American artist and filmmaker Andy Warhol (1928–87).

Stanza 2: “Our beloved mayor”: Ed Koch (1924–) served three terms as mayor of New York (1979–89).

Stanza 3: “Newton”: Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727), mathematician and physicist, one of whose laws of motion—“for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction”—is quoted later in this stanza. Tradition has it that Newton's conception of the force of gravity was the result of his seeing an apple fall in his orchard.

Stanza 3: “David Rockefeller”: David Rockefeller (1915–), son of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., former president and CEO of Chase Manhattan, now a philanthropist and supporter of the arts.

Stanza 3: “Jerry Falwell”: Jerry Falwell (1933–), is a fundamentalist and evangelist who initiated the Moral Majority and founded what is today known as Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia.

Stanza 3: “Chuck Willis”: Chuck Willis (1928–58) was a singer and songwriter most often associated with the Stroll, a dance popular during the 1950s. He had a number of hit singles, including a pop version of the old folk song “C. C. Rider.” He died from peritonitis following surgery for bleeding ulcers.

Stanza 3: “Johnny Ace”: John Marshall Alexander, Jr., a.k.a. Johnny Ace (1929–54), popular rhythm and blues singer whose premature, bizarre death (reputedly an accident when he was playing Russian roulette) sustained his reputation long after he died.

Stanza 3: “Sam Cooke”: Sam Cooke (1931–64) was a popular
and influential singer who emerged in the 1950s as a gospel star and then began recording popular songs, including the megahits “You Send Me” and “Wonderful World.” His influence on soul music as well as on many of its best-known performers cannot be overstated. “A Change Is Gonna Come,” recorded in February 1964, was his last great ballad. Controversy still surrounds his violent death.

Stanza 3: “Otis Redding”: Otis Redding (1941–67), one of the greatest soul singers and songwriters of all time, was killed in an airplane crash in Madison, Wisconsin. Although some people aboard survived the crash, Redding and four members of his backup group, the Bar-Kays, were killed; Giovanni has stated her belief that the crash was not an accident.

Stanza 3: “now we can call this game exactly what it is”: Slight variation on a line from the hit song “Rock Steady,” as written and recorded by Aretha Franklin. The original line is “Let's call this song exactly what it is.”

Stanza 3: “Anybody want a ticket to ride?”: “Ticket to Ride” was a 1965 hit by the Beatles.

“Mirrors (for Billie Jean King)”

The poem was occasioned by the 1981 palimony suit brought against the tennis star Billie Jean King (1943–) by her former secretary and lover, Marilyn Barnett.

Stanza 4: “only Dick and Jane”: Dick and Jane was an illustrated book series used as standard school texts from which it is estimated more than eighty-five million people learned to read from the 1930s through the 1960s. The Dick and Jane texts presented a white, homogeneous, middle-class world in which nothing bad (and nothing exciting) ever happened.

Stanza 4: “Ozzie and Harriet”: An ABC situation comedy that ran from 1952 to 1966,
The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet
featured the real-life Nelson family. It was the television equivalent of the Dick and Jane primers.

Stanza 4: “Pillow Talk is only a movie…or a song by Sylvia”: The 1959 movie
Pillow Talk
starred Doris Day and Rock Hudson.
The hit single “Pillow Talk” was released in 1973 by Sylvia Robinson under the name Sylvia. Robinson, who had appeared in the 1950s as one half of the Mickey and Sylvia duo, went on to create Sugarhill Records, which played a major role in introducing the world to rap music.

Stanza 5: “Like Humpty Dumpty”: In the Mother Goose story, Humpty-Dumpty shatters when he falls—because he is an egg.

Stanza 6: “because he robbed…poor”: The classic example is Robin Hood.

Stanza 6: “It Was A Mistake”: When Barnett outed King through the palimony suit, King, who had kept her relationships with women private, initially acknowledged the relationship with Barnett but called it “a mistake.” Not until 1998 did King publicly share her sexual preference, but she has since become an advocate for gay rights.

Stanza 8: “embraced…Medusa”: In Greek mythology, Medusa was a beautiful young woman whose hair was her most remarkable asset. When she made the mistake of competing in beauty with Athena, the goddess transformed Medusa's hair into hissing serpents. Medusa became a monster so frightening to gaze upon that anyone who did was turned into stone.

“Linkage (for Phillis Wheatley)”

Phillis Wheatley (1753?–84) was born in the Gambia, West Africa. Because she was the first African American to publish a book, she is generally regarded as the founder of the African American literary tradition. A victim of the slave trade, she was brought from Africa to Boston, Massachusetts, when she was about seven years old. She was bought by John and Susanna Wheatley, who named her for the ship on which she had been transported. Although she was originally purchased to be a domestic worker, the Wheatleys recognized her aptitude for learning and allowed their daughter to tutor her.

Stanza 1: “leaving Senegal”: During the transatlantic slave trade, the Senegambia region was an important source of slaves. It was subsequently colonized by the French and the British and evolved into two countries, modern-day Senegal and Gambia.

Stanza 2: “the children of Hester Prynne”: Hester Prynne is the heroine of Nathaniel Hawthorne's
Scarlet Letter
(1850).

Stanza 2: “The block…stood upon”: The auction block.

Stanza 3: “Hagar…Abraham”: Hagar, an Egyptian servant, was given to Abraham by his wife, Sarah, to be his concubine because Sarah was unable to have children. Hagar had a son, Ishmael, but when Sarah miraculously became pregnant and herself had a son, Isaac, she expelled Hagar and Ishmael from the household. See Genesis 16:1–6 and Genesis 21:8–21.

Stanza 5: “clitorectomies…infibulations”: Female circumcision is still practiced in a number of African countries.

Stanza 6: “How could she…in this Land”: Wheatley has sometimes been criticized for seeming to fail to express outrage at the institution of slavery; the specific poem suggested here is “On Being Brought from Africa to America.” The recovery of her letters has made clear that Wheatley did in fact denounce and decry slavery but that her poetry was written with an understanding of the prejudices and power of the white audience who would read it. Giovanni, of course, is offering a different perspective altogether.