ASU's Neal Lester reflects on life, death of poet Nikki Giovanni
Neal Lester with poet Nikki Giovanni, who passed away on Dec 9 at the age of 81. Photo courtesy of Neal Lester
When Neal Lester heard on Monday that poet and activist Nikki Giovanni had died, the news hit hard.
Lester, the founding director of Arizona State University’s Project Humanities and a Foundation Professor of English, admired Giovanni’s work and got to know the person behind the poetry.
Giovanni was one of the world’s best-known African American poets. She won the Langston Hughes Medal, an NAACP Image Award, was nominated for a 2024 Grammy Award for her poetry album “The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection,” and was named as one of Oprah Winfrey’s 25 “Living Legends.”
Lester also knew her as a woman who had fruit trees and a koi pond at her home, preferred writing letters the old-fashioned way to emails or texts, and had a wicked sense of humor.
ASU News talked to Lester about Giovanni’s writing and how their friendship came about.
Editor's note: The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Question: How did you get to know Nikki?
Answer: My first engagement with her actually came when I was in undergraduate school. I was in a poetry class, and she responded to a very naïve request to tell me what her poems meant. I didn’t realize then how ridiculous that was. I didn’t hear from her and didn’t expect to hear from her. I sent an email to multiple addresses, and most of them came back undeliverable. But then, probably about nine months after the class was over, I got a personal note from her. It was handwritten and on stationary and it said, “I hope you’ve finished your project and that you’ve graduated. I apologize. I was attending my father who is unwell.”
Q: When did you meet her, then?
A: So, when the Maxine Jonathan Marshall Speaker Series was held in 2011, I was dean of humanities at the time and part of the hosting team. I introduced her with that silly, ridiculous request, and she made the biggest joke out of that. From that point on, she said, “I don’t do technology, but we can become pen pals.” And that’s what happened. We started writing each other notes. Then, in 2014, she and her (wife), Virginia Fowler, invited me to Virginia Tech to do a lecture on race and the gender politics of hair. (They) invited me into their home, and I got to see her away from being the famous poet. I got to see her collection of hippos. I got to talk to her about her love for cooking. I got to see all of her books and first editions, and her love for gardening, the fruit trees and the koi pond. It was just a very different side of her.
Q: Why do you think the two of you connected as well as you did?
A: I was actually quite surprised that I was sort of pulled into her, I don’t want to say inner circle, but certainly in a space where she was responding. There was just something that she felt comfortable about inviting me into her life. One year, she invited me to bring a couple of students to a celebration that she was hosting at Virginia Tech for (novelist) Toni Morrison. Toni’s son had passed away, and she said she felt like the people who have benefited from Morrison’s words should now be able to give her a big hug. One of the things I remember most is that there was a fancy dinner. And she sat me at the table with Toni Morrison. I didn’t know what to say. The fact that she sat me at the table with Toni, I never quite understood. She later commented in a personal note that Toni enjoyed the company of handsome men. She also voluntarily asked if I wanted Toni’s endorsement for Project Humanities. And I was like, “Are you kidding me? Of course.” So she got me Toni Morrison’s endorsement. And then, to get a personal invitation to come to her private service just takes this to a very different level that I’m unable to explain.
Q: Why was her poetry so important?
A: The poetry itself is very hard hitting. It is unapologetic in its celebration of Black people. It is unapologetic in its celebration of Black love. It’s unapologetic on all levels. But there’s also this way in which she embraces a love for humanity. And it shows that those things are not exclusive. That you can be proud of one’s Black self in her case, and her Black woman’s self, embrace humanity and still call out systemic racism for what it is. I started writing down my thoughts after I heard about her passing, and I say in this piece that she is not a poet for everybody, but everybody for whom she’s a poet loves her. She is belligerent. She is irreverent. But she is passionate and authentic in what she writes about.
Q: It sounds as if your admiration for her was as much about who she was as it was what she wrote.
A: I have 20 to 25 notes from her over the past years. I don’t know why I was in that circle, but she never made me feel like I wasn’t in that circle.
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