a small, bright place.

vintageblackglamour:

Happy Birthday Nikki Giovanni! 

Easily my favorite poet, I inherited a fierce love of Nikki Giovanni’s words from my mother, who became enamored with her style during the Black Arts Movement. She is unashamedly and unabashedly herself. While she writes with an abandon that would lead one to judge that she cares little of others’ opinions of her, there is a deep compassion for the world interwoven in her words. You can hear the care put into everything she writes. Her work walks effortlessly the thin line between high-modernist, literary artistry and real, person-to-person story-telling. She does not strive to be some ethereal existentialist, understood only by those who consider themselves to erudite to deal with the lesser disciplines, but to be only the groovy, passionate, real version of herself. And I dig that.