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It feels good and right this week to sit with the beloved writer,

Nikki Giovanni's signature mix of high seriousness, sweeping perspective, and insistent pleasure.

She was a poet of the Black Arts movement that nourished civil rights. She's a professor at

Virgin Atec, where she brought beauty and courage after the 2007 shooting there. And she's an

adored voice to a new generation, an enthusiastic elder to us all. At home in her body and in the world

of her lifetime, even while she sees and delights in the beyond of it. You're always doing the best

that you can do, and you're always taking whatever ingredients you are given and making whatever it

is that you can make. And so being a Black American, and I don't mean to bring racing like that,

but being a Black American, I'm used to taking little bits of this than the other. My grandmother

did not waste. There was nothing that came into her kitchen that she didn't find a use for.

And I feel the same way with experience and with words. And as I have grown older, I refuse to let

who I was at 25 inform or make me be who somebody else thinks I should be at 72.

I'm Krista Tippett, and this is on Beying.

Nikki Giovanni has received numerous awards for her books of poetry and her works for children.

She's a university distinguished professor in the English department at Virgin Atec,

where she's taught since 1987. I spoke with her in 2016.

One of the most striking things that just jumped out at me all the way through

your writing and writing about you. And all the way to the latest volume of poetry you've

...