Vladimir Nabokov offers in his “Lectures on Literature” a scrupulous definition of what it feels like to read good works of literature. The experience is at once both mental and physical. “Although we read with our minds,” Nabokov stated, “the seat of artistic delight is between the shoulder blades.”
I found I was curious at such a specific and precise example of something so familiar but never previously explainable. People who are indifferent to books usually experience the equivalent of literary euphoria through mediums like music or film, but naturally, there is also a strict division of labor. It is like striking a fine balance between artistry and the rational powers of the mind that can only occur when reading worthy literature.
Such is my experience reading Nikki Giovanni, who sadly passed away Monday aged 81. Poet, activist and naturally a seeker of unanswerable questions, I first encountered Giovanni through grainy film: a video of when she was joined in dialogue with the eternally brilliant James Baldwin in London in 1971 – a staggering conversation during which they engage with themes of justice, freedom and what it means to struggle as a human being. It was an important moment because, as The New Yorker stated, “two of the most important artist-intellectuals of the twentieth century were engaged in intimate communion on national television.”
In a strange and tragic way, we almost never experience things so profound as this anymore. It’s not a lack of content or intellectual dogma to cling to; it’s a lack of talent and quality that pervades every industry, especially literature, creating grounds that are inherently unsustainable to genuine passion and creative expression. I know many aspiring, highly talented writers who, upon seeing a laughably unsophisticated, bovine volume with a deep stock and impressive demand lined on megastore bookshelves – printed with the almost meaningless “1# New York Times Bestseller” label in bold letters – receive a gut punch when they look down at their own notebooks and realize their work is better.
But that’s the beautiful part about writing. It is not about getting flimsy labels plastered on the front of your book – and that’s what both Giovanni and Baldwin understood. Writing for them is a confrontation with the world, not simply an outlet borne out of a desire for wealth or luxury. James Baldwin once said that when you’re writing, the “whole language of” it “is finding out what you don’t want to know, what you don’t want to find out. But something forces you to anyway.”
Giovanni, a writer who took much influence from Baldwin, deftly articulated his sentiments in her own work. Early in her career, her poetry took on a political connotation, something, as Baldwin says, she didn’t want to do but felt compelled to do. The New York Times wrote that Giovanni “addressed the horrors that had galvanized the civil rights movement: the murders of Emmett Till, the four Black girls in the Birmingham church bombing and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.” Giovanni speaks in scathing tones as she contests injustice and with somber words as she belabors over the intricacies of love. She knew what humanity yearns for but also knew how difficult and elusive the objects of desire are. In a passage from one of her many moving speeches, she said:
“All most of us want is somebody to love and someone we can love. We want a job that we can go to—sure, we’re underpaid, but at least we know it’s there. We want to feel that there is some dignity in our lives. I can’t believe that we are asking too much. We do want to feel there is something in us that is good and that is wonderful, and if we bring it out, no one will trample on it.”
I recommend everyone who likes poetry to read her work and look beneath the surface of it. On a deep, subjective level, it is about confrontation, about compelling oneself to undertake their own life, to recognize and locate somewhere in time and place where you exist and where you live, hopefully with a purpose. Giovanni captures what I believe to be the hope of all of humanity, especially when they face existential questions. You simply want to be enough, feel enough and live enough. In Giovanni’s words, contemplating on her own mortality, she said, “I hope I die warmed by the life I tried to live.”
Perhaps that should be our goal as well.
