Nikki Giovanni’s Ride

How many books of poetry have been called “Bicycles?”

How many poems have you read with the title “Bicycle?”

Nikki Giovanni wrote the poem and the others in the collection. In both, the bicycle is not merely a metaphor for life. Rather, it’s an expression of how she lived her life:  in love, not only with her wife Virginia Fowler or with everything that’s beautiful, but with being. She was who she was and, like love itself, nobody could take it away from her.

Therein lies the power of so many of her poems, essays and children’s books. She was not just another writer with a facility for language and a sense of imagery.  Rather, her works exude her authenticity and warmth. Having met her once, I can attest to the latter.

When I say she was in love, I do not mean that she was content with everything as it is or was: Much of her early writing was inspired by her involvement with the Civil Rights movement. Rather, she knew that it would take more than anger to change anything. If anything, she understood that real change would involve embracing the élan vital, even if she never used that term.

So why am I talking about Nikki Giovanni in the past tense? Well, two weeks ago, her ride, if you will, of 81 years ended two weeks ago. I read about her passing the following day, but I waited to write about her in the hope that in the right moment, I could do something resembling justice for her. I don’t believe I have with this post. So, I’ll do what I believe to be the next-best thing, at least in the context of this blog, and share the poem that’s the subject of my second question.

Bicycles

Midnight poems are bicycles
Taking us on safer journeys
Than 
  jets
Quicker journeys
Than walking
But never as beautiful
A 
  journey
As my back
Touching you under the quilt

Midnight 
  poems
Sing a sweet song
Saying everything
Is all 
  right

Everything
Is
Here for us
I reach out
To catch the 
  laughter

The dog thinks
I need a kiss

Bicycles move
With 
the  flow
Of the earth
Like a cloud
So quiet
In the October 
sky
Like  licking ice cream
From a cone
Like knowing you
Will 
always
Be  there

All day long I wait
For the sunset

The 
first star
The  moon rise

I move
To a 
  midnight
Poem
Called
You
Propping
Against
The 
  dangers

His Wheel Is A Mirror

In one of your English or art classes, you might have seen--or created--examples of "concrete poems".  They're the ones shaped like their subjects:




Il Pleut, by Guillaume Apollinaire, is one of the most famous of its type.  The text of it goes like this:

Il pleut des voix de femmes comme si elles étaient mortes même dans le souvenir

c'est vous aussi qu'il pleut merveilleuses rencontres de ma vie ô gouttelettes

et ces nuages cabrés se prennent à hennir tout un univers de villes auriculaires

écoute s'il pleut tandis que le regret et le dédain pleurent une ancienne musique

écoute tomber les liens qui te retiennent en haut et en bas


Here's a rough translation:

It's raining the voices of women as if they'd died even in memory

and it's raining you as well, the marvelous encounters of my life, O little drops

those rearing clouds begin to neigh a whole universe of auricular cities

listen if it rains while disdain and regret weep to an ancient music

listen to the fall of chains that hold you above and below


Another one of Apollinaire's famous concrete poems is Coeur Couronne Miroir:

Here's the text:

 Mon Coeur pareil a une flamme renversee

Les rois qui meurent tour a tour
Reanaissent au couer des poets

Dans ce miroir je suis enclos vivant et vrai
Comme on imagine les anges
Et non comme sont les reflets

which, in English becomes Heart, Crown and Mirror:

My heart is like an inverted flame

The kings who have died one by one
Are reborn in poets' hearts

In this mirror I am captured alive and true
The way you imagine angels
And not only as a reflection.

I couldn't find anything that would hint at whether or not Apollinaire was a cyclist. Given the time and places in which he lived, however, I imagine he rode a bike for at least some time in his life. 

From Strange Vehicles

If he'd written a concrete poem about a bicycle, would he have said the wheels were mirrors of his heart?  Or would it have been like this?:

By Anwar Choukah