Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea: Poems and Not Quite Poems [Hardcover]

Nikki Giovanni (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 5, 2002

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.

Editorial Reviews

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

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 110 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow; 1 edition (November 5, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060099526
• ISBN-13: 978-0060099527
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 5.7 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #591,349 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Quilting The Black-Eyed Pea - Sensational Poetry!, November 15, 2002

By 

Akirim Press Literary Group - See all my reviews

This review is from: Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea: Poems and Not Quite Poems (Hardcover)

Quilting The Black Eyed Pea by Nikki Giovanni is a gut wrenching and emotion jerking book of oh so fabulous poetry based on events from her heart and corresponding to major events that shook the lives of the nation called America.

Beginning with the Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea (We're Going To Mars), this poem is indeed one as I have never read in my life of literature. Nikki poetically finds similarities between the trip to Mars (that we yearn for) and the Middle Passage in the slave ship on it's way to a desitation unheard.

This poem reasons out the trip to Mars to be very important to us because of self denial, waiting for all our bad attributes to become lost somewhere else, so we journey off to leave our old selves back to try and find a new self.

Then all at once, we get to Mars and begin to kill the "Martians and the Martian Sympathizers". . ."As if the Fugitive Slave Law wasn't bad enough then". Sound familiar?

All of a sudden, the way that we are packed in the space ship is the same way the enslaved were whipped and chained in the slave ship. They survived though their survival own skills.

Thus, Nikki concludes with a smiling martian community watching us land on their terf while they simply continue to quilt a black-eyed pea.

This is remarkable. Focusing on Emmett Till, Susan Smith, Rosa Parks, and even President Bush and his response to the terrorists attacks and how it should have been! I must say. . . she makes much sense in her poetic vibe.

Her magnificent poems circle around love for animals and nature and any forms of life. . .especially human. Not to be self centered and consumed with everything that we forget everything. Learn to care and be compassionate. Nikki shares these feelings to us through saddness of past errors in the law, anger, sweetness and joy in her poetry.

If anyone is a poetry fan, Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea will grab you and take you off the ground. This books is wonderful because of the up front nature it contains while it speaks to you in a different light. It makes you feel and reflect.

Five Stars!

Mirika Cornelius
...

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars WONDERFUL!, February 15, 2003

By 

rockbaby1978 "rockbaby1978" (Nashville, TN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea: Poems and Not Quite Poems (Hardcover)

I loved this book of poems and not quite poems. I have so many favorites but the one I liked most was "Twenty Reasons to Love Richard Williams". When I read the title I was thinking who is Richard Williams...maybe some one she once dated. As I started reading it I realized who she was talking about. This poem is so funny yet so VERY true. I actually read it twice. There were several others that I enjoyed like "Aunt Daughter and that Glorious Song" and "Bring On The Bombs: A Historical Interview". As I read these I was sort of lost at first and then I realized that they were about James Weldon Johnson and Daisy Bates, I love the way that she tells the stories of those two events in history. I do wonder if "Aunt Daughter and That Glorious Song" is a true story. I also enjoyed "What We Miss", which was some what therapeutic for me becuase I lost my mother last year and many of the things that I miss about my mother were written in this poem. And "He Blew It" just speaks for itself.
I love Ms. Giovanni's writing and this book is one of my favorites. She is so truthful about everything that she has written here. It is like she put on paper what everyone has been thinking.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Poems and Essays¿Nikki Style, April 19, 2003

By 

Dera R Williams (Oakland, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea: Poems and Not Quite Poems (Hardcover)

Holding a book of poetry or essays by Nikki Giovanni is like holding a gift of joy in one's hand. In this slim volume called Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea, we get both genres. Some pieces have both; they start off as a poem and meander into essay form as in the self-titled offering, "Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea". What does H. Rap Brown have to do with NASA and Martians? Well, in this poem/essay, she ties it all together and somehow it all makes sense.

In "Twenty Reasons to Love Richards Williams, Giovanni pays tribute to Venus and Serena Williams' father; "He makes white folks crazy (PS and the black bourgeoisie, too)". "Don't Think" is but six powerful lines and "Blackberry Cobbler", now one of my favorite poems, is reminiscent of childhood and grandmothers. Tributes are paid to James Baldwin, Rosa Parks, and there is another Aretha poem. In these tributes, a ground work of black history is laid before she bestows the honoree with ultimate adulation.

As in Love Poems, her previous collection, Giovanni gives you words of wisdom, love, and conscientious discourse. This is a book that you will find yourself picking up again and again and wanting to share with others. This is poetry- Nikki style.

Dera Williams
APOOO BookClub