This year’s ringing out the old with hope for the new poetry ritual at Poe’s Grave celebrated the writer Nikki Giovanni, who died December 9th, 2024 at age 81.
Alvarez sips a cup of Dunkin’ coffee at the corner of Fayette and Greene as the first of several Giovanni poems are read adjacent to Edgar’s monument.
Poeinbaltimore.org director Enrica Jang also reads from Nikki’s work after telling the crowd of the Poe House museum expansion on Amity Street.
2024 group photo. Front: Anne Haddad and Rosalia Scalia. Middle: Jang, Alvarez and poet Jenny Keith. Rear: Tourist Michael from Florida who happened by and spent the morning with us; photographer Phil Laubner and videographer Patrick and, in newsboy cap, Will Backstrom.
The Laws of Motion
By Nikki Giovanni
(for Harlem Magic)
The laws of science teach us a pound of gold weighs as
much as a pound of flour though if dropped from any
undetermined height in their natural state one would
reach bottom and one would fly away
Laws of motion tell us an inert object is more difficult to
propel than an object heading in the wrong direction is to
turn around. Motion being energy—inertia—apathy.
Apathy equals hostility. Hostility—violence. Violence
being energy is its own virtue. Laws of motion teach us
Black people are no less confused because of our
Blackness than we are diffused because of our
powerlessness. Man we are told is the only animal who
smiles with his lips. The eyes however are the mirror of
the soul
The problem with love is not what we feel but what we
wish we felt when we began to feel we should feel
something. Just as publicity is not production: seduction
is not seductive
If I could make a wish I’d wish for all the knowledge of all
the world. Black may be beautiful Professor Micheau
says but knowledge is power. Any desirable object is
bought and sold—any neglected object declines in value.
It is against man’s nature to be in either category
If white defines Black and good defines evil then men
define women or women scientifically speaking describe
men. If sweet is the opposite of sour and heat the
absence of cold then love is the contradiction of pain and
beauty is in the eye of the beheld
Sometimes I want to touch you and be touched in
return. But you think I’m grabbing and I think you’re
shirking and Mama always said to look out for men like
you
So I go to the streets with my lips painted red and my
eyes carefully shielded to seduce the world my reluctant
lover
And you go to your men slapping fives feeling good
posing as a man because you know as long as you sit
very very still the laws of motion will be in effect
Copyright the Estate of Nikki Giovanni
Nikki at Edgar
New Year’s Eve / 2024
On the morning of New Year’s Eve, before we go our separate ways to close out the year, a few of us gather to take turns reading poetry from the pedestal of Edgar Allan Poe’s grave. Rarely more (but not nevermore) than a dozen of us any given year.
On December 31, 2024, I counted 11 people. All of us readers, a few writers, two photographers, a videographer and friends of the aforementioned. Some are regulars, like me.
Every year, there will be one or two people who hadn’t known there would be anything going on. People who visit purely to pay homage to the famous writer’s resting place. If you go to Poe’s grave on any morning and sit, someone else will eventually show up. Try it. To these pilgrims, we always say hello and would you like some hot coffee and doughnuts and, without fail, Lebanese baklava with pistachio?
We typicall read our favorite passage from Poe, whether a whole poem, part of The Raven, part of The Bells, the opening paragraphs of the short story, The Fall of the House of Usher, a perfect example of telling me something bad will happen without having to say that something bad will happen. It was fun to look for unexpected and obscure Poe, who wrote about furniture, science, traveling salesmen, everything.
In 2024, we broke from tradition. We read the work of a poet who has died that year: Nikki Giovanni (1943-2024). She was among the first poets I became aware of as a child. Her distinctive name, often in lowercase, and her poems in the Scholastic Book Club anthologies that I bought for pennies — 35, 75 or at most 95 cents, handing to Mrs. Bietry a white envelope heavy with coins and my order slip.
Nikki Giovanni, along with Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, Alfred Tennyson, e.e. cummings (who, like Giovanni, often preferred the lower case). Most of those poets were, like Poe, already dead by the time I learned to read, yet living eternally in their poems, as Giovanni will.
On the last day of the year, a year that has left some of us reeling, I chose to read Nikki Giovanni’s “The Laws of Motion.” I was surprised to later see that it had been written in 1970. For me, it’s all about the last half of 2024.
History of Poetry in Baltimore / 1945 to the present 