"Honkies always talking 'bout
Black Folks
Walking down the streets
Talking to themselves
(They say we're high--
or crazy)
But recent events have shown
We know who we're talking
to"
Giovanni's poems of the late 1960's fit squarely within the political ideology of Black Nationalism. Her words, punctuation, and cadence emphasize the experiences of Black people, making central their humanity and subjectivity. Giovanni capitalizes "Black Folks" while putting what White folks think in parenthesis -- "(They say we're high-- or crazy)." She titles the poem an essay "of Affirmation." She follows that with a parenthetical tongue-in-cheek acknowledgement to the FBI, whom she rightfully suspects of spying on high-profile Black Nationalist leaders of her time. The title itself affirms Black humanity and Black identity, while minimizing and almost taunting the FBI, an organization that targets Black leaders. These grammatical choices are clearly political. They send the strong message that Black people's own subjective experience of themselves should take precedence above what others may think of them.
"The Black Revolution is passing you bye
negroes
Anne Frank didn't put cheese and bread away for you
Because she knew it would be different this time"
Giovanni's use of punctuation is again evident. Capitalizing "Black Revolution" while relegating "negroes" to lower-case, Giovanni's political punctuation is in keeping with the language and symbolism of Black Nationalism. Her use of "bye" as double-entendre draws on African-American linguistic forms as well. Giovanni's conviction that "this time" will be different demonstrates a continuity with other freedom movements and a strong sense of urgency. "This time," she explains, there may not be any survivors to eat the bread and cheese, because "this time" the oppressed people may be completely destroyed.
"i wanted to write
a poem
that rhymes
but revolution doesn't lend
itself to be-bopping
then my neighbhor
who thinks i hate
asked--do you ever write
tree poems-- i like trees
so i thought
i'll write a beautiful green tree poem"
These words are written in a staccato cadence that emphasizes the sharp distinction between Giovanni's apprehension of the world and the way her friends and acquaintances might experience the world. As a revolutionary Black poet, Giovanni notices things about the world that others don't. Her reality contains a kind of gritty bleakness that makes it difficult to write about things like flowers and trees. She goes on to describe her environment: "peeked from my window / to check the image/ noticed the school yard was covered / with asphalt / no green--no trees grow / in manhattan." Though the world is full of bleakness, Giovanni concludes on a note of radical self-empowerment. While she may not write poems about trees, she does engage in the movement for Black freedom, thus striving to make a better world. She ends with the observation that "perhaps these are not poetic / times / at all." This observation isn't hopeless. On the contrary, it raises the possibility that we can move toward a more poetic era in which maybe trees would grow on her side of Manhattan.
"Don't look now
I'm fading away
Into the gray of my mornings
Or the blues of every night"
This poems invoke the melancholy of the blues. Symbols of fading, aging (or turning "gray"), and loneliness run throughout the work. There's a deep loneliness in the command "don't look now." The speaker doesn't want her body gazed upon; she feels her body (and, by extension, her self) to be unlovable, ugly, "blue." Giovanni shows that this loneliness and alienation is a common human experience. The speaker could stand in for Giovanni herself, Black women, all women, and even all human beings. The work probes the relationship between desirability, loneliness, and intimacy. Though she continuously tries to beautify herself, the speaker's body continues to fade into nighttime (deterioration, death). Her loneliness and alienation reach a fever pitch when the speaker exclaims "I strangle my words as easily as I do my tears / I stifle my screams as frequently as I flash my smile / it means nothing." The poem ends abruptly, with no narrative resolution. Perhaps it is through the act of writing a poem that Giovanni releases this strangulation. Perhaps the written poem is itself the resolution, bringing the speaker out of silence to speak her truth, however "ugly" that truth may appear to the world.
