Dimensions
147 x 242 x 16mm
"Remarkable" Gwendolyn Brooks
"Wonderful" Marian Wright Edleman
"Outspoken, prolific, energetic" The New York Times
The poetry of Nikki Giovanni has spurred movements and inspired songs, turned hearts and informed generations. She's been hailed as a healer and a national treasure but if her reputation is writ large upon the national stage, her heart resides in the everyday where family and lovers gather, friends commune, and those sacrificed are remembered. And at every gathering there is food, food as sustenance, food as aphrodesiac, food as memory. A pot of beans are flavored with her mother's sighs, this sigh part cardamom, that one the essence of clove. "In Still Life with Apron" a lover requests a banquet as an affirmation of ongoing passion, and an homage is paid to the most time-honored appetizer, soup.
With CHASING UTOPIA, Nikki Giovanni demands that the prosaic - flowers, birdsong, winter--be seen as poetic and reaffirms once again why she is as "energetic" and relevant as ever.