Poetry Wednesday 08/20/08: Shimmy, Shimmy, Shimmy Like My Sister, Kate

Nikki Giovanni is one of the best-known and most accomplished African-American authors. A professor of English at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, she speaks frequently around the country.

Nikki Giovanni’s last work is a wonderful anthology of poems by the very best African-American writers including Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Gwendolyn Brooks and many others.

For Poetry Wednesday this week, I have taken three poems from her compilation, “Shimmy, Shimmy, Shimmy Like My Sister, Kate”.

Juxtaposed with the poems, Giovanni has added her own highly personal responses, sometimes including cultural context, sometimes just saying why the poem speaks to her. The poems are consistently excellent, and Giovanni’s comments are always perceptive and often wise.

The following poem, “Sympathy” reminds me of Maya Angelou’s, “I know Why The Caged Bird Sings”, which I posted a couple of weeks ago.

Sympathy
by Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906)

I know what the caged bird feels, alas !
When the sun is bright on the upland slopes,
When the wind blows soft through the springing grass,
And the river floats like a sheet of glass,
When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,
And the faint perfume from its chalice steals.
I know what the caged bird feels !

I know why the caged bird beats his wing
Till its blood is red on the cruel bars,
For he must fly back to his perch and cling
When he fain would be on the bow aswing.
And the blood still throbs in the old, old scars
And they pulse again with a keener sting.
I know why he beats his wing.

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore.
When he beats his bars and he would be free.
It’s not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that it sends from its heart’s deep core,
But a plea that upward to heaven it flings.
I know why the caged bird sings !

We Wear the Mask
by Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906)

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,-
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be overwise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh, the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask.

Paul Laurence Dunbar learned to read, from his mother’s teachings, at a very early age. He showed superior talents in the English language and reading almost immediately. While in high school, he had intended to go to college, but he was forced to take a menial job that paid only four dollars a week to support himself once he graduated. He faced racism as soon as he went out on his own. He found that no matter how educated he was, he could only get jobs involving physical labor, usually jobs that paid the least. His poetry was just about his only way of venting his frustration. In his early twenties, he fell in love with another young black writer by the name of Alice Ruth Moore. He met her through her poetry, which he saw published in a newspaper. Though they were a loving couple, they later were divorced because Dunbar’s sudden popularity, through his poetry, caused many separations between him and his wife.

The Creation
by James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938)

And God stepped out on space,
And He looked around and said,
“I’m lonely-
I’ll make me a world.”

And far as the eye of God could see
Darkness covered everything,
Blacker than a hundred midnights
Down in a cypress swamp.

Then God smiled,
And the light broke,
And the darkness rolled up on one side,
And the light stood shining on the other,
And God said, “That’s good!”

Then god reached out and took the light in His hands,
and god rolled the light around in His hands,
Until He made the sun;
And He set that sun a-blazing in the heavens.
and the light that was left from making the sun
God gathered up in a shining ball
And flung across the darkness,
Spangling the night with the moon and stars.

Then down beween
The darkness and the light
He hurled the world;
And God said, “That’s good!”

Then God himself stepped down-
And the sun was on His right hand,
And the moon was on His left;
The stars were clustered about His head,
And the earth was under His feet.
And God walked, and where he trod
His footsteps hollowed the valleys out
And bulged the mountains up.

Then He stopped and looked and saw
That the earth was hot and barren.
So God stepped out over to the edge of the world
And He spat out the seven seas;
He batted His eyes, and the lightnings flashed;
He clapped His hands, and the thunders rolled;
And the waters above the earth came down,
The cooling waters came down.

Then the green grass sprouted,
And the little red flowers blossomed,
the pine-tree pointed his finger to the sky,
And the oak spread out his arms;
The lakes cuddled down in the hollow of the ground,
And the rivers ran down to the sea:
And God smiled again,
And the rainbow appeared,
And curled it self around His shoulder.

Then God raised His arm and He waved His hand
Over the sea and over the land,
And He said, “Bring forth! Bring forth !”
And quicker than God could drop His hand,
Fishes and fowls
And beasts and birds
Swam the rivers and seas,
Roamed the forests and the woods,
And split the air with their wings,
And God said, “That’s good!”

then God walked around
And God looked around
On all that He had made.
He looked at His sun,
And He looked at His moon,
And He looked at His little stars;
He looked on His world
With all its living things,
And God said, “I’m lonely still.”

Then God sat down
On the side of a hill where He could think;
By a deep, wide river He sat down;
With His head in His hands,
God thought and thought,
Till He thought, “I’ll make me a man!”

Up from the bed of the river
God scooped the clay;
And by the bank of the river
He kneeled Him down;
And there the great God Almighty,
Who lit the sun and fixed it in the sky,
Who flung the stars to the most far corner of the night,
Who rounded the earth in the middle of His hand-
This great God,
Like a mammy bending over her baby,
Kneeled down in the dust
Toiling over a lump of clay
Till He shaped it in His own image;

Then into it He blew the breath of life,
And man became a living soul.
Amen. Amen.

“I am old enough to remember when every black child was required to memorize and recite the poems of Langston Hughes or James Weldon Johnson. The recitation of these works usually took place at church or in school. And these occasions came as close to a rite of passage as anything possessed by the Black Community in those days. Each child practiced for weeks to stand before parents and friends to recite the words of these two great poets. And woe unto the child who forgot his lines or who gave a recitation that did not move those assembled. For the younger children, Langston Hughes was more than appropriate. But for those in the upper grades, James Weldon Johnson’s works were the only ones that would suffice. And among Johnson’s works, only The Creationwas deemed a masterwork. Only the best of the best was ever allowed to present this work to a congregation or the school assembly.”

~ A review of The Creation by Amin Sharif from Chicken Bones, A Journal, for Literary African American Themes.

Yolanda Cornelia “Nikki” Giovanni was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, and raised in Ohio. In 1960, she entered Fisk University, where she worked with the school’s Writer’s Workshop and edited the literary magazine. After receiving her Bachelor of Arts degree, she organized the Black Arts Festival in Cincinnati and then entered graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania. In her first two collections, Black Feeling, Black Talk (1968) and Black Judgement (1969), Giovanni reflects on the African-American identity. Recently, she has published Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea: Poems and Not-Quite Poems (William Morrow & Co., 2002) Blues For All the Changes: New Poems (1999), Love Poems (1997) and Selected Poems of Nikki Giovanni (1996). Her honors include the NAACP Image Award for Literature in 1998, and the Langston Hughes award for Distinguished Contributions to Arts and Letters in 1996. Several magazines have named Giovanni Woman of the Year, including Essence, Mademoiselle, and Ladies Home Journal. She is currently Professor of English and Gloria D. Smith Professor of Black Studies at Virginia Tech.

I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate – Ottilie Patterson, Chris Barbers Jazz Band

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Sis! This is a fantastic blog, so interesting, vital and historical, pulled together so beautifully with music and photos. Very enjoyable! The kids love Nikki Giovanni, too. Terrific!

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