The thing about Nikki Giovanni is that sometimes she as a superb poet, full of spit and fire and snappy wordplay and smart writing, and other times you really wish someone had told her to keep some of her poems in drawers or something because they can be cringeworthy and awful. This collection is a mix of the two. It's also a mix of genres--poetry and addresses and letters--in which there is an awful lot of overlapping text. I think as an editor I'd have curated this a bit more carefully so as to avoid readers reading the same passages repeatedly, or with tiny and not very meaningful alterations. I found the strongest poems to come near the end, and these are some of her best. Others, especially ones written in the heat of a moment (and not revised or edited?) are weaker and come across too often as superficial and lacking in real thought. Unless you're a completist in terms of collecting her work, get this one from your library.

This was an incredible read! I enjoyed reading the poems, letters, and stories in this collection. It was interesting about her life and experiences. I plan to read more of her work.

A beautiful collection of some of Giovanni's last works. If you've enjoyed her work in the past or if you're brand new to her writing, this encapsulates her essence.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with a free eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I am a poet
All I really have
Are words

The New Book is Nikki Giovanni’s extraordinary final collection of poems, letters, blurbs, and things. They say you become less filtered, less patient, and more honest as you age, and I can tell from this collection that Auntie Nikki was fed up. She held no punches about her feelings toward Trump, “Find the courage/To help rid us all/Of the festering mold in the White House” (Vote 2024, It Matters). She emphasized the importance of voting, specifically calling out young people and Black men, “At sometime/There has to be Black/Men who step up recognizing/They are needed…Vote for Harris/We need you brother/Vote for the love we gave you last night”. I love the way she honored Toni Morrison, her friend Ashley Bryan, and her grandparents. In The Coal Cellar, she wrote about her precious inheritance, “Maybe not a big bank account or trust fund/ And certainly not any property but I inherited/ A morning and a great deal of knowledge/In a cold coal cellar/With my grandmother”. I enjoyed reading about the things that brought her joy, her love for poetry, her family history, and the small pleasures of her richly lived life. Thank you to NetGalley and William Morrow Books!

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.