I could hear a little music in my head with some of these poems - I liked that. There is definitely a jazzy rhythm here. There's a fair amount of fairly tame but fun sexual stuff in here. I like that. But there's also a lot of feminine please-love-me desperation. That's not my thing at all and ge...
Putting poetry to beats is a creative idea, and Nikki Giovanni does an excellent job in putting together a collection of 51 poems for the book "Hip Hop Speaks to Children: A Celebration of Poetry with a Beat." The poems are written by various authors and include various forms. There are classica...
Many of these poems and essays are more peaceful than Nikki's previous works that I'm familiar with, coming to her work as did much of the country, after the Virginia Tech massacre. Chasing Utopia (which opens with beer don't you know,) has more food, and down home, and weather, and family. Othe...