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Writing about the loss of a public figure is something I rarely do. Because my busy mind often takes me longer to process than the news cycle allows. But Nikki Giovanni’s death on Monday at age 81 felt different. That night, after putting our son to bed, I searched her name in my Gmail account, looking for letters related to the essay I had assigned her. The words I was looking for were in a letter she wrote to me four years ago: “My job, but I have always felt, is the next step.”
Since almost the beginning of my career I rely on poets for moments that seem to defy definition or analysis. Back in 2015, as the new editor of espnW, I had a bit of a relationship with a sports writer. But I know that if I turn to poets whose work I admire Experts on these words and their meanings may help us broaden the scope of who we call athletes. Poetry helps us make sense of things that are confusing, painful, or unpredictable. And I rely on them to do that—whether it be in the poems I write. Death of Muhammad Ali or five female poets I was commissioned to write about the women’s marches that followed Donald Trump’s defeat of Hillary Clinton in 2016 and his subsequent inauguration.
And in 2019, Serena Williams returned to dominate the tennis court after experiencing problems. Life-threatening complications After giving birth, I turned again to my poetic powers—this time to Giovanni. I was in college when I first read her poem “Ego Tripping (Maybe There’s a Reason Why)”: –I’m so perfect So sacred, so ethereal, so surreal / I cannot comprehend / except with my permission,” she wrote in 1968, the year Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. I feel for your work. She knew black women needed to be reminded of their brilliance. She often shows us how we can use irony and pride to console ourselves when we are hurt. I’m sure Giovanni will be able to write some things we still don’t understand about Serena. So I emailed my partner Virginia Fowler to ask if Giovanni would support ESPN’s platform. undefeated– I was very surprised that Fowler said that Giovanni agreed to talk to me on the phone. She wanted to write about Serena by Focus on Venus Williams As the eldest sister Because she also idolizes her big sister, Gary Ann.
Giovanni’s article helps readers remember that Serena is a human being, with a life, struggling because of her fame. and the pressure she felt as a black athlete “Lucky little Alexis Olympia,” she wrote to daughter Serena. “The one that showed Aunt Venus how to run down the rabbit hole to meet the queen. It’s no harm at all.”
I’d like to believe that only poets would think of continuing the allusion. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Let’s be sports stories to help us see real people. Not just athletes Giovanni addressed the criticism Serena faced as a able-bodied black woman with a strong personality in a largely white sport. She shows us Serena as a mother. Her words help us see goats in a different way. “You can learn to speak two languages,” Giovanni wrote. “You can take the figure that once stood on the auction block and place it there. cover of Vanity Fair Naked, Pregnant, Proud,” she reminded me that we need more Black women poets in a world that often doesn’t understand us. She knew how to write about Serena through Venus to reveal the complex lives of all athletes. Especially black women
Fowler, though, has always acted as Giovanni’s digital middleman. But the poet never felt distant from me. I remember talking to her easily, as if we had been friends for a long time. She never made me feel like I should be honored or feared because I was working with one of America’s most admired poets. But she graciously accepted my corrections and suggestions. She also thanked me for asking her to write. I imagine her kindness to the hundreds of students in her class at Virginia Tech, where Giovanni teaches until 2022.
However, it wasn’t until she turned down the job in 2020 that I began to understand how she viewed her place in the writer’s canon. At the height of the protests over the killing of George Floyd, I asked her to come back and watch it again. Conversation She used to work with James. Baldwin in London in November 1971, after initially agreeing to write the essay. She wrote a letter to me which Fowler attached to the email. In which she explains why she changed her mind.
I’m just as excited. Working with Nikki Giovanni, a friend of Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, the rejection or the reasoning behind it made me feel like a real editor. She is offering lessons in how to think about the work that was happening at the time. “I think Jimmy’s voice is extremely important. And I often see other writers. Whistling similarly,” she wrote, “the writing about Race in America would be very different without Jimmy.” But she didn’t want to return to Baldwin during a period of upheaval that seemed to demand a response that different which does not need to be fixed. “Jimmy and his generation want to explain to white Americans what they did wrong,” she continued, “but Black Lives Matter just wants to move forward.”
On the surface, her letter can be read as a repudiation of thinkers from another generation—perhaps to her own benefit. But Giovanni, now in her late 70s, was making a broader point. She noted that Black Lives Matter does not have an office. phone number or leader, and she called it a smart decision. At the time, I didn’t know what she was trying to tell me. I should move on as well. She wanted to help me see that the civil rights movement did not belong to one artist or one generation. In her own subtle way She warns her editors not to get hung up on big names and lines. Instead, let’s focus on the stories that move us forward. “Now when a black man is murdered,” she wrote, “it wasn’t Malcolm or Martin, it was George Floyd that they thought no one would know or care about.”
Although she is outstanding But Giovanni never saw herself or her generation own the movement. Instead, she sees her knowledge and experience as something she wants to pass on. So that people can speak after she’s gone. Giovanni has spent his entire life in conversation with the present. I had to find and re-read her letter to understand if the move was fair. at– They can’t stop. Although she is no longer here, her words, actions, and beliefs remain. And they told us we had to keep writing, thinking, and advising. There is no time to wallow. As she wrote in the letter: “I’m a big blues fan. Not because they are sad, no, but because they give us a chance to move forward.”
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