Nikki Giovanni, Bicycles: Love Poems. and Reflections on Geoffrey Hill

I often have an issue with a lot of political or revolutionary poetry, unless it’s really good, then I tolerate it or if it’s really good I praise it.

Two overtly political poets, on opposite ends of the spectrum, are Nikki Giovanni and Geoffrey Hill

Nikki Giovanni, Bicycles: Love Poems.

I found Nikki Giovanni’s Bicycles: Love Poems interesting.

I am not really a fan of Nikki Giovanni’s poetry, because honestly her voice honestly doesn’t speak to me. Also I enjoy, really enjoy, more formal, and less free, verse. Some of Giovanni’s work almost approaches a prose like density which makes it very readable, but I can’t enjoy it, take pleasure in it, as much as I would like. Also many of her poems are very politically engaged, and as I’ll comment on a bit more,

I mentioned that, in general, poetry that’s conspicuously engaged in social politics rarely interests me, unless the voice is able to transform personal political outrage into something incandescent, or it is able to bring to bear an incredible sense of humor.

Humor and incandescent rage reek of authenticity, and authenticity of voice moves me powerfully.

In this case, I enjoyed Giovanni’s Bicycles: Love Poems. Her voice is full of authenticity.

And Nikki Giovanni at her best can be incredibly funny.

She can also be incredibly lyrical, her free verse sometimes has a sort of scent of meter, or at least is very rhythmic, but it is a rhythm without fanfare.

There is something almost conversational about many of her verses, in Bicycles: Love Poems, like a conversation between friends.

In social-political verse, irrespective or if it’s Progressive or Conservative, I favor more allusiveness and less directness, especially when talking about matters of class, race, or gender. The few overtly political pieces in this collection are more direct, but a sense of humor, not quite sarcasm, sort of wafts about making them more enjoyable. Giovanni is also a difficult poet but her difficulty lies more in the emotions evoked in a discourse that is very self conscious in its discussion of gender, race, class, and sex.

The poems in this collection are ultimately about love, and they discuss love with a calm, friendly, sometimes angry, sometimes amused, but always conversational tone. I pleasantly enjoyed Bicycles: Love Poems. I recommend it to you.

(In passing, I’m amused by the fact that she grew up in Lincoln Heights Ohio, few famous people ever come from there, and I like the place since a branch of the Southalls held a bit of a lockdown on the mayor-ship of Lincoln Heights for many years.)

On Geoffrey Hill,Selected Poems, and general thoughts.

Geoffrey Hill, of England, is a different type of poet. He’s of the same generation as Frederick Seidel, with similar influences (both knew Robert Lowell and other early confessional poets) – Hill’s work is as difficult to get a hold of as Seidel’s, though I should pester local independent chains to carry him more.

Hill is not a popular poet, but among a certain circle he is very, very, influential and regarded by man as possibly the best English language poet currently writing in public.

I recently read his Selected Poems compilation of 2006, and was pleased to know of the new Oraclau | Oracles. I haven’t gotten my hands on it, but hope to soon. Without Title is also a strong collection.

The man is allusive to the point of tediousness, like the bastard offspring of a misbegotten mental fornication between T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, the unwanted child left alone in an abandoned library and forced to eat books for survival.

His voice changes slightly as he ages, less anger and rage, more ruminations. Unlike Seidel who can cop a contemporary cant, Hill is at his best when is language is massively and ponderously  formal.  I consider Geoffrey Hill to be one of the few masters at Blank Verse. His enjambments are masterful. He has taken pentameter, wrung out of it as much force as it can deliver, and fractured it allowing it to express more.

His aesthetic is one of aged history and violence, literally bathed in blood. Poems about severed heads, armies bathed in gore, it’s very English, in this way. Rather Shakespearean, the squeamish should note.

On blood – Geoffrey Hill also is politically.. complex. Again, usually I do not like political poetry very much, it is difficult to do it well. Of Hill’s overtly political pieces some are excellent in formal construction, pointing to his linguistic mastery, but frankly they fall flat, in my opinion, or they fall into a pedantic preachiness.

However, some pieces are so full of outrage, that the emotions themselves transform the pieces, the dry shell of politicized cant and historical allusions become aflame, and when aided by a suitable form can be quite powerful.

One think I like in F. Seidel is his casual poking at political sacred cows. Geoffrey Hill is a far more serious character – an old guard Anglican, probably the closest thing to a true Tory still writing.

However, he’s from a real, and solid, Working Class family. Unlike a lot of Merlot and Salmon socialists saddled with middle class and upper class guilt (the pretensions which Seidel regularly eviscerates) – or the current crop of corporate indebted financial mandarin class Tories, that are England’s analog to our neo-cons, Hill’s political views have a real, solid, earthiness to them. He’s the sort of old Tory I can respect, and not some newly rich self-interested prick.

Hill’s political tradition is actually, historically, radically reformist. The sort of older Tory conservative stance Hill embraces is not that of the rich at all, it was one very much concerned for the local, the worker, the simple man.

Hill isn’t simple. He’s complex and difficult, Hill drives poetic complexity almost to the point of absurdity. But not past that point, he creates a tension – I like his complexity and difficulty.

The subtle and not so subtle allusiveness of Geoffrey Hill’s poetry makes the reader work, the sounds and rhythms appeal to the body and soul, but frankly his self-displayed erudition requires serious work of the reader. And in a lazy age I value this.

There is something brutally sensuous about Hill’s verse that many people will miss, the intellectualism is wrapped in a sort of gritty sensate package that, once recognized, is really enjoyable to read.

Some think ours is a trite age of sound-bites (or bytes), in such an age anything “difficult” is scorned. Both Hill and Seidel emerged as far more formal poets, and much later in life played with looser free forms, that retain a degree of rigor and aptly present complex and difficult ideas.

I think their success as poets is partially grounded in this, a sort of mastery of poetic craft that’s routinely ignored – partially out of laziness I suspect. Also perhaps, but also because things like prosody and formal versification just are not taught anymore.

Both Hill and Seidel can get great effects out of their free verse because they are so accomplished in formal verse. Hill himself, though an academician, staunchly recommends self-education for aspiring poets, self education through copious reading, and assiduous practicing of a poet’s craft.

I hope to read Oraclau | Oracles soon.