Nikki Giovanni, “Potty Mouth”

Nikki Giovanni, who has been dubbed “The Princess of Black Poetry,” was widely praised for her remarks after one of her students went on a shooting rampage at Virginia Tech. Sometimes, however, her eloquence is a bit strained.

The Albany Times-Union reports today, for example, that in a talk at the University of Albany Giovanni, 63, described Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, 52, as “a crazy old bitch.”

Of course, this really isn’t news. The famous black poet is so well known for her invective that the Times-Union reporter covering her speech described her as “the poet-turned-potty-mouth.” And with good reason. At a poetry reading at the reopening of Cincinnati’s Fountain Square, she described Ken Blackwell, the black Ohio secretary of state who was then running for governor, as a “son of a bitch” and a “political whore.” For some reason, the Cincinnati Enquirer regarded her remarks as “inappropriate.”

She may not like conservative black politicians, but she also does not like many black male writers who are not conservative. She once said, responding to some remark by Don Lee, “if he weren’t such a poor writer I would have puked. The nerve of this son of a bitch, if I may, to say what my writing should be….”

In some respects the poem that Virginia Tech commissioned her to write for the recent convocation there, although it lacks the potty-mouth invective, is not so different. An excerpt:

We are Virginia Tech

We do not understand this tragedy

We know we did nothing to deserve it

But neither does a child in Africa

Dying of AIDS

Neither do the Invisible Children

Walking the night away to avoid being captured by a rogue army

Neither does the baby elephant watching his community

Be devastated for ivory

Neither does the Mexican child looking

For fresh water

Neither does the Iraqi teenager dodging bombs

Neither does the Appalachian infant killed

By a boulder

Dislodged

Because the land was destabilized

No one deserves a tragedy

Unless I’m missing something (and I might be; my poetic skills are rivaled only by my math skills), what Giovanni is saying here is that the Virginia Tech victims have something in common with the victims of rapacious, militaristic, western capitalism but, oddly, not with any other blameless victims.

Actually, I prefer the potty-mouth invective.