Earlier this month, the celebrated and prolific poet, author and professor Nikki Giovanni died at the age of 81 from a third bout of cancer, according to Virginia Tech. She taught at the university for 35 years as an English professor before her retirement in 2022. Giovanni published her first collections of poetry, “Black Feeling Black Talk” and “Black Judgment,” in 1968, and was a leading figure in the Black Arts Movement that emerged during the civil rights era.
We listen back to an interview we recorded with Giovanni in 2014 after the release of “Chasing Utopia,” a collection of poetry and prose that covers topics both personal and political.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud, I’m Dave Miller. The poet, author and professor Nikki Giovanni died from cancer last week at the age of 81. Giovanni published her first collections of poetry, “Black Feeling Black Talk” and “Black Judgment” in 1968, and was a leading figure in the Black arts movement that emerged during the civil rights era. Over the course of her career, she wrote an entire shelf’s worth of poetry, essays and children’s books.
I sat down with her 10 years ago, in 2014, when she came to Portland on a book tour for her book “Chasing Utopia.” She wrote in it “the only bravery available to us is to remember.” And remember, she did. She had stories about family, friends and food. There were scenes from her childhood, meditations on historical traumas, and celebrations of music and art.
The title of the book, “Chasing Utopia,” comes from one of the essays in the collection. It sounds like it’s going to be some kind of high-minded philosophical search, but it’s actually about a glorified beer run. I asked Giovanni to tell us that story.
Nikki Giovanni: Mommy, my mother, died and I was very sad. But Mommy died on June 24, and then my sister Gary had a brain tumor and she was dying. So Mommy died June 24, then Gary died August 10 and then my Aunt Ann, who always did what my mother did. So we knew Ann was going to die. And she died October 26. Then my good friend Rosa Parks died, like four days after that. I actually got rid of the suit, because I had this black suit, and I thought “I need to get rid of the suit. The suit’s bringing bad luck.”
Miller: You wore black suit to all their funerals?
Giovanni: To all the funerals. Yeah.
Miller: And then you threw it out?
Giovanni: I didn’t throw it out. I have a collection, like all writers. I sent it up to the Mugar Memorial Library, so it’d be like “this is a suit she wore to all of that.” But I literally went from being the baby in the family to being an elder of the family. And I was sad. I laugh about it, but people don’t know, I’m responsible. And when all of a sudden everybody dies – my father’s already dead – there were things you had to do, houses that have to be sold, just crap, crap, crap.
So I thought, “You got to pull yourself together, because people are dependent – well, they’re dead, but you have responsibilities.” So we got all of that done. I’m a big fan of mourning and I know Americans don’t believe in it. Americans believe in moving on. I don’t, I believe in mourning, you just give in. So when I got done everything that had to be done, I did the thing that people do when they mourn: I overdrank. So every morning, I did. And every morning, I’d get up and do what I had to do. Then about 11:00, I’d pour a glass of Chardonnay and go sit out on the deck with Alex. Alex is my dog. And then, 3:00 or 4:00 in the afternoon, I’d switch to red.
So that worked for about a week, maybe eight days. I poured a glass of wine on maybe a Tuesday, ‘cause in my mind, it was a Tuesday. And Alex looked at me – I don’t know if you’re a dog person, but your dog talks to you, it’s a mammal. Alex looked at me with one of those “again?” And I looked at her and said, “You’re right, I can’t keep doing this.”
My mother drank a beer every day of her life, every day. We knew that she was dying when she didn’t want a beer. So I said to Alex, “OK, why don’t we drink a beer for the old girl and start to pick the pieces up?” But I don’t like beer. I cook with it, but I don’t drink it. So I thought, “well, if I have to drink a beer, I need to drink the best beer in the world.” So I went up to the bookstore. Unfortunately, we don’t have Powell’s bookstores. I went up to a bookstore and looked up the beer, and the number one beer in the world is Utopia. I knew that the local grocery store is not gonna have Utopia.
Miller: This is a series put out by Sam Adams, the Boston brewery.
Giovanni: These are things that I discovered in my quest for the number one beer. It’s also $350 a pint.
So I called the local wine store, the wine seller Keith. And I said to Keith, “Do you have a Utopia? I’d like to have one.” He says “We don’t get it.” And I was like “Well, you could order it and I’ll pick it up.” He said “No, Nikki, you can’t. We don’t get it, they won’t sell it to us.” So I called another couple of places that I knew that sold specialty, and they didn’t have it either. And it just became a quest. It really did give me something to do because I ended up speaking at the CIA before I found out where I could get it, because they have all the computers you can find whatever you want on Earth. If the CIA looks for it, you’ll find it.
Miller: Yes, we’ve learned that to be true.
Giovanni: Let me be really clear … they could not buy it, they didn’t buy it for me.
Miller: What were you doing as a poet, speaking to the CIA?
Giovanni: I speak to almost anybody that doesn’t threaten me. I mean, I wouldn’t speak for the Klan because I don’t think that they would invite me. But I’m a citizen, so the CIA needs to hear poetry.
Miller: So you gave a poetry reading at Langley?
Giovanni: Yeah, I did.
Miller: What did you read?
Giovanni: I did Rosa. Martin Luther King. I did that series of Black … Well. you know it was February. Because they’re not gonna call me in March. [Laughter]
Miller: Oh, they called you in February …
Giovanni: Oh, in February, of course. It’s Black History Month!
Miller: ... because of Black History Month – “Let’s go ahead and bring a Black poet in?”
Giovanni: C’mon, yeah, “let’s find a Negro,” so they found me. You know, big deal. [Laughter] It was very pleasant actually. Good lunch.
Miller: You did find, eventually, this Utopia beer. How was it?
Giovanni: It was incredible, actually.
Miller: I want to go back to something you said earlier. After all these deaths in such quick succession, you went from being the baby to being the elder. So what did that mean? How was that role different?
Giovanni: Oh my, well, you have more responsibilities. My family is like any family, it’s a hierarchy. Mommy is the eldest sister. Mommy had two sisters. Ann was the next sister. They were what was called Irish twins, 11 months apart. And my Aunt Agnes, who is still with us, is 92. And Ag and I went to Antarctica with … I only have one other girl cousin and her name is Allison. So Agnes, Allison, Jenny and I went to Antarctica last year. It was a lot of fun. You walk out to the rookeries [and] she said “Well, I don’t know if I could go five miles.” I said “Well, if you can’t make it for five miles, if you sit here, you’ll freeze to death. We’ll take your body, put it in the refrigerator and we’ll go on. We paid for the room, so we’re not gonna give it up.” She goes “Oh, I hate you!” But she did, we walked out to the rookery, we did everything. It was wonderful, it was fun.
Antarctica is incredible. I’m trying to get NASA to send writers, because right now they haven’t sent any writers to Antarctica. We’ve sent scientists and we’ve sent photographers. But we haven’t sent writers. There are a couple of things going on. There are no hotels, as you know, in Antarctica. And whatever it is that we’re gonna know about space, we’re gonna learn it through our imagination in Antarctica. So I think we need to send writers and a couple of cases of really good wine.
Miller: So what would a writer get you that a photographer or a scientist couldn’t?
Giovanni: We imagine things. We see things. First of all, we could start with something very basic. And I’ve been working on that, but it’s an idea. I don’t want to own it, particularly. Superman did not live in the North Pole. Superman lives in the South Pole. You know why? Because he needed privacy. And in the North Pole, you got Santa Claus and all them elves. You see what I’m saying?
Miller: So the Fortress of Solitude is gonna be south.
Giovanni: So he’s gonna go into the South Pole where nobody is because he needs privacy. So the first thing that you begin to imagine is this man living in this ice palace, right? And he’s gonna have visitors, because we know he’s in love with Lois Lane. We know that when Lois Lane is in Antarctica, she’s having an affair with Superman. So it changes everything, doesn’t it?
Miller: Let’s get back to the food and family, which is so present in so many of the pieces in this book. I wonder if you could read us the poem “The Right Way.”
Giovanni: Yeah, we are cooks.
[Nikki Giovanni reading her poem, “The Right Way”]
My grandmother’s grits Are so much better than mine
Mine tend to be lumpy And a bit disorientated Though that is probably My fault
I always want To put 1 cup grits Into 4 cups cold Water with 1 teaspoon Salt And start them all together
Grandmother did it The Right Way
She started with cold water That she brought To a boil
Shifted the grits slowly Into the bubbles
Then added her salt
She also hummed While she stirred With her wooden spoon
I wonder if I Should learn To sing
Miller: What would she hum?
Giovanni: Some gospel songs. [Humming] She made grits every day. We knew that Grandmother was passing the morning she didn’t wake up and make grits.
Miller: What were they like, those grits?
Giovanni: Oh, just incredibly smooth. Mine are lumpy. I do make ‘em and I like yellow grits. Grandmother didn’t – she’s a Tennessean, she did white grits.
Miller: A lot of things that are fascinating about this poem, but one of them is that it seems like you know how to make them the right way, but you don’t. Why not?
Giovanni: Then I wouldn’t miss Grandmother.
Miller: What do you mean?
Giovanni: You’re bringing tears to my eyes. She did her grits; I do mine. And every time I make them, I think of Grandmother. If I made her grits, I would soon think of just the grits, I think.
Miller: So you sort of set that aside, let her grits be what they always were for your memory.
Giovanni: And mine are all lumpy. And I say “ugh, if Grandmother was here!”
Miller: What do you think about in general while you’re cooking? There’s so much here about the power of food to tie us to our past. What goes through your mind when you’re cooking?
Giovanni: Oh, who taught me to cook it. I’ve taught myself some things. I grill. Neither Mommy nor Grandmother grill, they both roast it. I do grill. But, for the most part, you think about why you came to this dish and how you put it together. Every time I make okra, that’s a grandmother dish, and my great grandmother Mama Dear. I eat peppermint. And my great grandmother, who we call Mama Dear – name’s Cornelia – what she did was she kept a barber pole. And if you liked her, she would take a little cobbler’s hammer and she’d knock a piece off. Grandmother would say to Mama Dear “You’re treating those children like a bird!” Because she’d knock a little piece off and then she’d put it in your mouth, you’d be like a bird.
Miller: When you say a barber pole, you mean like an enormous piece of peppermint? I was thinking about an actual barber pole, but this is a huge thing of candy?
Giovanni: Peppermint. Yeah, like an inch round.
Miller: And she had a hammer and she could knock out a little piece for you.
Giovanni: Mhm. But she wouldn’t give it to you, she’d put it in your mouth. So you were like a little bird standing there with your mouth open, she’d slip it in. [Laughter]
Miller: Do you feel a connection between cooking and writing?
Giovanni: I don’t know, I think the connection I feel is between cooking and love.
Miller: What’s that?
Giovanni: Because you cook the dishes that the people that you love cooked. That’s what you do. Writing about it is something outside of that. My mother loved pig feet. So every now and then, I just go to “oh, it’s time for pig feet.” And I only know one restaurant, which is called the Blue Duck in Washington D.C., that makes pig feet. They roll theirs and then they boil it, but mommy just fried hers. So I do that, and I squeeze all of that out and it’s delicious. You do things because you remember the people that enjoyed it.
Miller: In one of your stories, your character, or you, goes to a giggle bank after a period of grieving. What is the idea of the giggle bank?
Giovanni: Oh, my grandmother had the world’s best laugh. I was very fortunate. Only two of the grandchildren, my cousin William – who had a heart attack and he’s gone now – and I, are the only grandchildren that lived with Grandmother. But Grandmother had a hearty, hearty laugh. And I was just dealing with the sadness, because that was written after Mommy passed. I was dealing with that. And of course, that’s my imagination, but I thought “oh, Grandmother probably deposited some giggles for me, so I should go and collect them.” And that’s why the giggle fairy is admonishing me: “We’ve had these things here for you and you’ve been sitting around mourning and overdrinking.” So I was just dealing with it that way.
Miller: You said Americans don’t do mourning right.
Giovanni: We don’t.
Miller: Why not?
Giovanni: I think because we think that everything should be OK. Your mother dies and everybody said, “well, it’s for the best.” For whom? For whom? I just read an article not too long ago that finally admitted you will mourn for a pet. And I was thinking, “well, what school did you have to go to to learn that?” Of course you mourn for your pet! You probably mourn for your pet more than you do anything else because your dog gives you unconditional love, whereas your parents, you argue with and stuff.
Americans always want you to move on. Well, why should you move on? You have to take that moment to be. Because you are, you’re sad. You have to take that moment to, I don’t wanna say enjoy the sadness, but you have to embrace it and say “Yes, I’m missing something. Something is gonna be gone. There’s gonna be a hole in my heart.”
Miller: When you dealt with so much loss though in such quick succession, how did you go from that, to tapping into that sense of joy, that idea of your grandmother’s giggle again?
Giovanni: Well, you’re seeing something nobody else is seeing, that when we talked about Grandmother, tears came to my eye.
Miller: I saw it, but I think everybody could hear it.
Giovanni: But you know, I’m not … You do, at some point say to yourself, “OK, you’ve done what you could do, and now you have to live.” And if you don’t want to do that, then you should cash it in on another level. I don’t wanna do that, I have obligations. Again, I love the giggle bank because I love the giggle fairy, because she was right to tell the girl, “We had this resource here for you and you didn’t use it. And now that you’re here, we’re gonna make it available. But you need to keep it in mind that you need to let people help you.” And I think that’s all that poem says.
I think it’s all poetry because that’s the way I write. But I like those stories that I did in “Chasing Utopia” because if “Chasing Utopia” were a dish, we could fry it. And it would be nice and crispy, it would have just a little bit of salt. But it would have that back sweetness you get. Southerners always put that little bit of sugar. You make cornbread, somebody’s putting sugar, and they say “what the hell is that?” Nobody but Southerners would put sugar in cornbread. But we always have a little bit of sweetness.
Miller: Back sweetness.
Giovanni: Oh yeah. That’s what Utopia tastes like, by the way. It has a butterscotch kick.
Miller: I’ll have to trust you on that. Because I don’t think I’m gonna be spending $350 on a pint.
Giovanni: Why not? Why not?
Miller: You’re saying life is worth it?
Giovanni: Oh heck yeah. It’s not something you’re gonna buy every week. Why wouldn’t you? You’re gonna turn, I don’t know, in your case 30.
Miller: That’s very generous of you.
Giovanni: Well, you know what I’m saying … 35.
Miller: We’ll call it 40.
Giovanni: Well, definitely then you need to do it, between now and 50. Why wouldn’t you want to drink a $350 bottle of anything? Of course you do. You deserve it. [Laughter]
Miller: Let’s get to birthdays and birthdates. There are a lot of them in the book. In one essay you include … or I guess you’re calling everything a poem in this?
Giovanni: Well, you know, it’s poetry, whatever.
Miller: In one of them, you include your own birthdate. You say June 7, 1943. So you recently celebrated your 70th birthday. What did that mean to you?
Giovanni: Well, first of all, I hope it means my Watson genes are kicking in. I’m a Giovanni, obviously – Gus is my dad. And all of the Giovannis, including my sister Gary, died before 65. Gary died on August 10, and she would have been 65 on September 2. So when I got beyond 65, I have almost no recollection of 65 because I just blocked it. I just knew, well, if my Giovanni genes are kicking in, I’m gonna be dead soon. So there’s no point in thinking about it. I don’t want to go through 365 days of being worried that a car is gonna hit me. And when it didn’t, I said “OK, I made it, I’m 66.” So when I got to be 70, I think “well, maybe the Watson gene are kicking in.” Because my aunt is 92.
Miller: She’s hiking in Antarctica?
Giovanni: Oh yeah. And cousin Bea, whom you don’t know, but at one point, cousin Bea was the oldest person on Earth at 104. She has passed also. But I thought, if those Watson genes could kick in … And she was still playing good cards.
Miller: Not just cards.
Giovanni: No, not just cards. We play Bid Whist, she still could beat you. And it’s like “Oh damn, I’m losing to a woman that’s 104. What is wrong with me?”
I recommend 70. I love it. I fell in love and that was a lot of fun. You’re looking at me strange.
Miller: No, I’m looking at you because I want to hear the story.
Giovanni: Oh, well. There’s not much of a story that I’m gonna tell. But it was great fun to fall in love.
Miller: Well then, let’s hear a poem, which is about its own version of love. Can you read us “Still Life With Apron”?
Giovanni: Oh yeah, that was the poem. Because yeah, he was wonderful. He is wonderful. We’re not seeing each other anymore, but that was very nice.
[Nikki Giovanni reading her poem, “Still Life With Apron”]
I would like to see you
Cooking
I would like for you to cook
For me
I would like to see you decide
Upon a menu
Go to the market
And pick the fruit
The vegetables
The fish
I would like to see you smell the fish Test the flesh for freshness and firmness
I would like to watch you
In the bakery
In the bakery by the dinner rolls
Deciding: Rolls or Crusty Bread
I would watch you run back
To get the Goat Butter
I would like to be sitting in a corner
And you
Intent upon your meal
Not noticing me
When you go to the wine store
I would watch you wrestle with the red or white
White, of course, because it’s fish but red
Is Seductive who ever fell in love
Over a glass of white wine
I–uncharacteristically on time–
Would like you to greet me
In a butcher’s apron
I would like to watch you greet me only
In an apron
You would ask me to undress
To undress for you
Before I sit back down at the beautiful table
Before you hand me my glass
You would ask me to undress
I would like to watch you watch me
Undressing for you
I would like to watch the movement inside the apron
As I undress for you
I would like to watch you walk
No
Stroll to your closet
Where you bring out your old buffalo plaid dressing gown
Your pilly much-washed dressing gown that smells like you
After you brush your teeth
After you shower After you comb your hair
I would like to embrace your odor
Your odor Your essence as we sit down to eat
I would like you to cook for me
I would like that
Very much
Miller: What a great, lusty poem. Society doesn’t carve out too much of a space for talk about sexuality or sensuality for people in their 50s, 60s, 70s, 90s. What do you want to tell people in this poem?
Giovanni: I wanted to tell a person that I was interested. [Laughter]
Miller: Did you give this poem to a man?
Giovanni: Of course I did!
Miller: What was his response?
Giovanni: He laughed. We’re friends. I wrote that because I fell in love. Why wouldn’t I write a poem about it? 70 is the new 50, somebody told me. And I don’t know, but I know there’s a libido until you’re dead. And there may be a libido after, I don’t know. I know your fingernails still grow and your hair still grows, I don’t know what else does still grow.
I smiled all the way through this book because all of a sudden, you don’t have to answer to anybody. Mommy’s gone, my father’s gone, my older sister is gone. I don’t have to answer to anybody. So I’m allowed to say and do what I would like.
Miller: From the grieving came a sense of freedom?
Giovanni: Yes. One of the things that’s happening with “Chasing Utopia” … and somewhere there’s another book someplace, if the plane doesn’t fall when I go back to Atlanta. “Chasing Utopia” is Nikki. It is: I am me. And that’s why you got the date and that’s why you got some of the other definitions of me. I was born Yolande Cornelia, for my Great Grandmother Cornelia. My mother’s name is Yolande. I was Yolande Cornelia Giovanni Junior. And I was very proud to carry Mommy’s name, but I’m known as Nikki. And so when Mommy died, I had my attorney make it official. I am Nikki and that’s important to me.
Miller: You have a poem about living alone. And unlike a lot of things we might read about being alone or living alone, it’s not about loneliness, it’s more about freedom. What do you think it takes to live alone well?
Giovanni: I’m disciplined. You have to have some sense of discipline. I think that that’s really important. I have also a great admiration for the old British – I don’t know why, I really couldn’t begin to tell you. You need to get up at a certain hour and you say “OK, I don’t do breakfast, I’m a rolling stone.” We were laughing recently. I’ve been on the road all my life, so breakfast … like this morning, if I had tried to do breakfast, I had to get up at 5:30 or something crazy, sitting in the airport.
But I do like lunch, if I’m not having any obligations. I like to lunch. So that starts with a glass of champagne when I’m doing that. But no matter what, dinner is my favorite meal. So my day starts with “what will I have for dinner?” And whatever it is, I like to cook, as you know because you’ve been following the book. I’ll start with setting the table. If nothing else because then I get to look at a pretty table all day.
Miller: Even if you’re eating by yourself?
Giovanni: Especially if I’m eating by myself. Because if you don’t do that, you’ll end up having a bowl of cereal like you don’t matter.
Miller: Eating over the sink.
Giovanni: Yeah, or you open a can of something. Which I have no concept of that – so few cans in my house. The first thing you have to say is, “I need a really good glass, nice crystal glass. I need a really pretty plate.” My grandmother had silver and I am the inheritor of her silver, so I use her silver.
Miller: You write in one of your essays that you’re mostly adventurous in your head. But you’ve just told us about doing poetry readings at the CIA, going to Antarctica. What do you mean when you say that the adventurousness happens in your head?
Giovanni: Well, these are things you do because you get invited, so I say “yes.” Almost anybody could ask me almost anything and I would say “yes.” Some scare you. Like I’m going to a high school. Nothing scares you like going to high school. [Laughter]
Miller: Really? Even if you’re doing a reading in just a few hours at a Portland High School, why does that scare you?
Giovanni: Teenagers! [Laughter] I mean my God, you’re standing in front of teenagers. I think that human young is essentially intelligent. You really worry about how it’s gonna be received because this means something to you. But you have to go out and do that.
In terms of me imagining things, that’s why I want NASA to send a bunch of writers, like 10 of us, so that we could go sit down and have some wine and daydream in Antarctica. I won’t get to Mars. I would love to get to Mars. And I’ve been very fortunate because the old SST, which you’re too young to remember, supersonic transport, I was able to take that a couple of times, which goes up to 80,000 ft. So you do get to see the curve of the earth. And that was totally, totally fascinating to me. I would love to go to Mars. And I think that they need to send old ladies. We keep sending young people to Mars and they … “we don’t know what’s going on.” We keep sending young people into space. And that’s just crap.
Miller: What would an old lady that some young astronaut buck wouldn’t?
Giovanni: First of all, we’re not competitive, so we’re available to whatever is there. I’m a Tennessean by birth. I grew up in Cincinnati. And John Glenn is an Ohioan. He was the 2nd man in space. Alan Shepherd went up and came back, but John went around. John Glenn saw something. You can go back and look at it. At one point, he’s in the module. And he said “Get out of here, get out of here!” Because he saw something, something was there.
If you send a grandmother, somebody like me into space, my first thought is gonna be, “Come here, baby. Who are you?” That’s what a grandmother would ask.
Miller: Instead of shooting them with your raygun?
Giovanni: Yes.
Miller: Is the act of writing poetry, can that be adventurous?
Giovanni: It is adventurous. One of the things that scares you is that, no matter what we say, we don’t want to be misunderstood. I don’t wanna speak for every poet. I mean maybe some. But you do want to be understood. You also want to take it to another level. Poetry is emotional knowledge. What you’re really trying to [do] is get people to open up their hearts and their heads to say, “Oh!” We were talking earlier about the spider that I killed. I still feel so bad about that. And I have not killed another spider since.
Miller: Can you read us briefly that poem? It’s a poem called “Allowables.”
Giovanni: What page is that?
Miller: That’s on page 109.
Giovanni: I’m sorry.
[Nikki Giovanni reading her poem, “Allowables”]
I killed a spider
Not a murderous brown recluse
Nor even a black widow
And if the truth were told this
Was only a small
Sort of papery spider
Who should have run
When I picked up the book
But she didn’t
And she scared me
And I smashed her
I don’t think
I’m allowed
To kill something
Because I am
Frightened
I was just never so much embarrassed by myself. And I can’t get her back, you know. That was one of the ugliest things I think I’ve done. I killed a spider because it scared me. So I had to say to myself, “you can’t do that.” You just can’t do that. And I do live in the country, so we do have brown recluse spiders. If a brown recluse spider bit me, it would kill me. We do have black widows. And that would not kill me, but it would cause me a problem.
But I needed to say to myself, as I looked at this, because I’m mourning my mother in this book too, “she’s somebody’s mother.” There’s some little baby spiders in my garage. Oh God, I just felt so awful. So there’s a skunk poem someplace in this book, because I was driving Agnes, my 92-year-old aunt. And we were arguing, talking and laughing. I tend to speed – I get tickets on a regular basis. All the cops know me. It’s like, “Doctor Giovanni, another ticket!” And then you have to go to driving school. [Laughter]
I was speeding up because I live up a mountain, and I was speeding up the mountain. I had Agnes and she had to go to the bathroom or something. And we’re going up, and I just hit brakes. She said, “what’s the matter?” And I didn’t know. And as we crested, there was this skunk. There she was. And I thought “well, thank God, whatever made me do that?” We came to a stop, and the skunk looked at me and I looked at her. And that time, I was proud of myself because, God I couldn’t have forgiven myself if I’d hit that skunk. All she wanted to do was get home to her children. I wanted to get home to Alex. Alex is my dog, by the way.
Miller: Where do you get your energy from?
Giovanni: Life is interesting, don’t you think?
Miller: Yes. But a lot of people half your age don’t have half your energy.
Giovanni: They’re not paying attention. I mean, life is fun. One does get tired. But that’s why God made ships and oceans, so you get on the ship and you go sailing. I like the Panama Canal. I love going up to Alaska cause I get to stop over in Seattle. You get on the water, and it goes back back and forth, and you get to look at the moon. God made champagne too. All of these things relax you.
I’m not tired. I mean, I love book tour though. I do. I love book tour.
Miller: You have I think you have more energy than any author on a book tour I’ve ever talked to.
Giovanni: It was so much fun. People come out. What is the downside of book tour? People come, they smile at you, you get to meet great people like you. I met another young man from Nigeria here in the studio. What is the downside of book tour, are you kidding?
Miller: All right, we’re gonna play this for other authors who seem haggard when they arrive. Next time you come, let’s spend an hour together.
Giovanni: That’d be fun.
Miller: That was the celebrated poet, essayist and storyteller Nikki Giovanni in an interview in 2014. It ended up being the only time we ever talked, but I remain truly grateful for that opportunity. Nikki Giovanni died last week at the age of 81.
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