Nikki Giovanni’s The New Book Poems, Letters, Blurbs, and Thing is a last read of a great poet in the American canon. Many of the poems continue her gentle but inquiring journey to associate the world with kindness and wonder. As is so often the case she uses nature to relate to our human condition, the condition of the world in which we live and understanding it.
An outhouse turned into a mailbox is genius of its own.
I think of her father beating her mother and her musing over whether he was just mean or a drunk. This is a child’s longing to understand at the same time it led her to her grandparents to get out of the house and listening to that kind of cruelty from those she loved.
Hoods over heads/badges over hearts which is just another iteration of white supremacy being more a change with the times to defy explanation of cruelty.
A letter to the nature conservancy group to save as many trees as possible.
Giovanni’s poems can easily be filed under pleas to save a world we have less and less respect for which is something put into us and is not normal
As Giovanni states, I am a poet…all I really have are words this is a complex line which reminds us how powerful and changing words can be.
The line it ain’t mine from Fathers is so hurting when you realize you’ve heard these words used against children who might learn their father isn’t their father. Or maybe he is the father and is divorcing his humanity with “it.”
Maybe it’s me, but I felt a sense of Giovanni working through some final memories of her life that had shaped the poet and her words. I did feel like I was missing a more coherent collection of poetry but am glad I got the honor of reviewing her final book.

I got to hear Nikki Giovanni speak back in 2018, I had to look up the year because I couldn’t remember. She spoke like she wrote. Honestly, fiercely, with a sharp wit, a touch of humor and a whole lot of heart. This is a beautiful collection that captures all of her. She will be missed.