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Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of maximum fun.org and is distributed by NPR.

It's Bullseye.

I'm Jesse Thorne.

The poet Nikki Giovanni died earlier this month.

She was 81.

I was lucky enough to get to talk to her in 2021, so I figured

we'd replay our conversation. When Nikki Giovanni would write a poem, she would write it plainly.

She'd recount a conversation with an old woman that she'd had when she was younger,

basically just let the conversation play out. She'd recount childhood memories the way a journalist might,

chores she used to do, old habits her grandpa had. She'd described clothes, a red swimsuit,

blue sandals. It's poetry that catches you off guard, plain language that evokes memories and

talks about big ideas. And I'll be honest, her poems have made me cry more than once.

Giovanni was born in Tennessee in 1943, raised mostly in Ohio. Her early work focused on the

civil rights movement, not chronicling it, really, but reacting to it, the hope and exhilaration, grief,

and anger. She collaborated with James Baldwin.

She was friends with Maya Angelou. She interviewed Muhammad Ali. She published dozens of books of both

poetry and essays. She made some really wonderful record albums as well. You might have guessed

that I'm a huge fan of her work, but I'm far from the only one. She won a Grammy Award,

...