Nikki Giovanni: Love Poems & A Good Cry: What We Learn From Tears and Laughter

Written by Nikki Giovanni

Narrated by Nikki Giovanni

Hear Nikki Giovanni read two extraordinary collections of her own work! A singular listening experience!

The poetry of Nikki Giovanni has spurred movements, turned hearts and informed generations. She’s been hailed as a firebrand, a radical, a healer, and a sage; a wise and courageous voice who has touched our national consciousness.

Love Poems: Nikki reads a stunning collection of over twenty romantic, bold, and erotic love poems, expressing notions of love in ways that are delightfully unexpected and full of fearless passion and spirited wit. From the revolutionary ""Seduction"" to the tender ""Just a Simple Declaration of Love,"" and the elegiac ""All Eyez on U,"" written for Tupac Shakur, these poems embody the fearless passion and spirited wit for which Nikki Giovanni is beloved and revered.

A Good Cry: With her new collection Nikki offers listeners an intimate, affecting, and illuminating look at her personal history and the mysteries of her own heart. Reading her work, she takes us into her confidence, describing the joy and peril of aging and recalling the violence that permeated her parents’ marriage and her early life. Nikki also celebrates her good friend, Maya Angelou, and the many years of friendship, poetry, and kitchen-table laughter they shared.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperAudio
• Release date: Oct 24, 2017
• ISBN: 9780062743091

Nikki Giovanni

Nikki Giovanni is a Grammy-nominated American poet, activist, and author who has written many books of poetry for children and adults. She is the author of Ego-tripping and Other Poems for Young People, I Am Loved, and Rosa, a Caldecott Honor book. She has received some twenty-five honorary degrees, was the first recipient of the Rosa L. Parks Woman of Courage Award, and has been awarded the Langston Hughes Medal for poetry. She lives in Blacksburg, Virginia, where she is a University Distinguished Professor of poetry at Virginia Tech. Instagram: giovanni.nikki nikki-giovanni.com

Reviews for Nikki Giovanni

[baystatera · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A collection of poems with some short prose pieces, A Good Cry gives a personal glimpse into the joys and sorrows of the poet's long life, including remembrances of her close friend Maya Angelou and others whose lives helped shape her own.

[greeniezona · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Really, I don't know how I held off on reading this for so long, it's been in my house for months. I guess I was really motivated by the TBR challenge to read books I'd owned longer than a year!While her poetry has always been personal, in many ways this felt like an exceptionally personal collection for her. Many poems work through her childhood -- witnessing her father abusing her mother, until she was sent to live with grandparents to get away from the strife. The schools she went to, her relationship with her sister. It also has much to say about Maya Angelou -- Giovanni's friendship with her, Maya's many legacies, and remembrances for her after her death.Now I need to read more Angelou.Of course I love "Space: Our Frontier." I love Giovanni's love of science and exploration and how she firmly anchors them in the humanities and humanism. And dreaming.

[bookwyrmm_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A collection of poetry on the bittersweet topics of aging, death, and the past.