Pace Paw Print

Media Credit: Samantha Egan Despite the many fans she has won through her poems and essays, Giovanni told her audience " I don't like fame…I don't think it's fun at all."

Outhouses, trips to Mars, and her dog Kennedy were just a few of the topics poet, writer, commentator, activist, and educator, Nikki Giovanni, discussed with her audience Friday night at Pace.

The event, held in the gymnasium of Goldstein Health and Fitness center was the first of Pace's fourth annual University Fest.

Giovanni is praised by a number of literary critics, including Publisher's Weekly which described her as "one of the youngest and most controversial poets of the Black Arts movement." Her works have been praised since the late 1960s. Giovanni has several published books of poetry including Quilting the Black Eyed Pea: Poems and Not Quite Poems, and Love Poems. She is also a distinguished professor at Virginia Tech.

Her reading at times seemed more like a discussion with the audience as she shared some personal stories, often provoking laughter from the audience, which usually led to the poems she read aloud.

Before her first reading of Nikki-Rosa, a poem Giovanni said she wrote for her parents' wedding anniversary, she discussed her opinion on the choice between being rich and being poor.

"Rich works," she told her audience. "If you have a choice between rich and poor, choose rich."

She then described her elaborate plans for when she someday becomes rich, involving designing a house for herself which would include round architecture, which she said Africans first created, with Italian marble and an outhouse, something she said she had growing up and remembers fondly.

To make the outhouse a trend for rich people, Giovanni said she'd give the outhouse a fancy, French title "La Toilette."

Giovanni showed her talent as a speaker by not only amusing the audience but also informing them of deeper topics. This was seen in her remarks leading up to the reading of her poem "Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea (We're Going to Mars)."

In the poem, which she read when asked to visit N.A.S.A., Giovanni compares man kind's journey into space with the voyage African captives took to America during the Middle Passage.

The U.S. didn't "pick up slaves like we pick up coffee at Starbucks," she told the audience. "We captured free people and made them slaves."

Despite her growing popularity, Giovanni didn't seem to be reveling in her new fame as others would.

"I don't like fame," she said. "I don't think it's fun at all."

When asked to speak at Virginia Tech, Giovanni said she had her largest audience yet.

If she never had it again "that would be okay with me," she said.

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