Product Description

When Nikki Giovanni's poems first emerged during the Civil Rights and Black Arts Movements of the 1960s, she immediately took a place among the most celebrated and influential poets of the era. Now, Giovanni continues to stand as one of the most commanding, luminous voices to grace America's political and poetic landscape.

In a career spanning over thirty years, Giovanni has created a body of work that's become vital and essential to our American consciousness. This collection of new poems is a masterpiece that explores the ecstatic union between self and community. Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea is an extraordinarily intimate collection. Each poem bears our revered cultural icon's trademark of the unfalteringly political and the intensely personal: The elegant "What We Miss" exalts the might and grace of women, while "Swinging on a Rainbow" rejoices about the spaces in which we read; Giovanni commemorates Africa and her family legacy in the majestic "Symphony of the Sphinx" and contemplates our America in the heartbreaking "Desperate Acts" and "9:11:01 He Blew It." And in the dreamy "Making James Baldwin" and dazzling "Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea," Giovanni gives us reason to comfort, to share, to love, to change and to be human.

Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea is Nikki Giovanni's meditation on humanity and soul. It's her revelatory gaze at the world in which we live -- and her confession on the world she dreams we will one day call home. Nikki Giovanni is a national treasure as she once again confirms her place as one of America's most powerful truth tellers and beloved daughters.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #943035 in Books
• Published on: 2002-10-24
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .65" h x 5.73" w x 9.58" l, .63 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 128 pages

From Library Journal
Particularly in light of the recent deaths of June Jordan and Gwendolyn Brooks, readers might well look to Giovanni as spokeswoman for the black experience. And, at times, she captures it, effectively representing "all the women who said Baby, Baby, Baby I know you didn't mean to lose your job...I know you didn't mean to gamble the rentmoney I know you didn't mean to hit me." A recent poem, "Have Dinner with Me," written after the World Trade Center collapsed, is a modern masterpiece. Unfortunately, too many of these poems, though themselves strong, seem intent on rehashing the 1950s political climate. And the "Not Quite Poems" predominate. These proselike pieces include childhood memoirs that draw the reader clearly into her experiences, and there is a delightful spoof on what the movie of Harry Potter should have been, but elegiac tributes and political diatribes fare less well. "I keep trying to learn something new so I can share what I am learning," she writes in a letter-poem to a convict on death row. While the effort is to be praised, she too often comes up with insights readers have absorbed a long time ago. For larger collections.
Rochelle Ratner, formerly with "Soho Weekly News," New York
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
For 30 years Giovanni has channeled her experiences and responses to American life into bluesy poetry that entwines the political and the personal and celebrates womanhood and black society and culture. Hers is an embracing, uplifting, and sustaining voice, one given to both anger and humor. In her latest collection of 50 new poems and "not quite poems," Giovanni pays sweet tribute to her grandmother and remembers Gwendolyn Brooks: "Not only one of the premier poets of America but a woman for all seasons." She also shares family stories, ponders a scary bout with cancer, offers an unusual view of Harry Potter, and scathingly castigates Bush and Gore. In the title poem, she's at her swinging best, funny and wise as she riffs on the line "we're going to Mars," writing in one striking stanza, "because whatever is wrong with us will not / get right with us so we journey forth / carrying the same baggage," and yet, Giovanni hopes, we may be lightening that burden bit by bit. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
“An embracing, uplifting, and sustaining voice.” (Booklist )

“One of her best collections to date.” (Essence )