A Quote by Nikki Giovanni
The poet Melvin B. Tolson once said "A civilization is judged only in its decline." That made sense to me. I would imagine the same is true for poets and tennis players.
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The poet Melvin B. Tolson once said, 'A civilization is judged only in its decline.' That made sense to me. I would imagine the same is true for poets and tennis players.
I once gave a workshop and I asked the women poets there, If you went back to that little town you've come from - these were from small towns - would you say, I'm a poet? And one of them said, If I said I was a poet in that town, they'd think I didn't wash my windows. And that stayed with me for so long, the sense of the collective responsibility of someone as against the individual thing it takes to be a poet.
A poet once said, "The whole universe is in a glass of wine." We will probably never know in what sense he meant that, for poets do not write to be understood. But it is true that if we look at a glass of wine closely enough we see the entire universe.
Plato said that poets should be excluded from the ideal republic because they are such liars. I am a poet, and I affirm that this is true. About no subject are poets tempted to lie so much as about their own lives; I know one of them who has floated at least five versions of his autobiography, none of them true. I of course - being also a novelist - am a much more truthful person than that. But since poets lie, how can you believe me?
A civilization is always judged in its decline.
As for what I have done as a poet, I take no pride in whatever. Excellent poets have lived at the same time with me, poets more excellent lived before me, and others will come after me. But that in my country I am the only person who knows the truth in the difficult science of colors-of that, I say, I am not a little proud, and here have a consciousness of superiority to many.
One of the surest tests of the superiority or inferiority of a poet is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate mature poets steal bad poets deface what they take and good poets make it into something better or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique utterly different than that from which it is torn the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time or alien in language or diverse in interest.
Somebody once asked me, 'Melvin, how'd you get to the top?' It was simple. Nobody would let me in at the bottom.
The only nice poets I've ever met were bad poets, and a bad poet is not a poet at all - ergo, I've never met a nice poet.
My theories explain, but cannot slow the decline of a great civilization. I set out to be a reformer, but only became the historian of decline.
I just said let's get some poets on tv. And when they said that sounded unlikely, I made it worse. I said, no man, I want to put a bunch of black poets on stage, too. Some Latino poets who barely speak English and Asian poets who can't believe how discriminated against they are. It was luck nad being in the right place. I wasn't saying nothing somebody else wasn't saying but they wouldn't hear it from them.
Western Civilization has been in a state of decline since the Edwardian age, say 1910. That was the height of Greco-Roman European civilization. Then there was the First World War. That was the beginning of the end. That civilization has been in a decline ever since. But from the American triumphalist point of view our wonderful electronic revolution is really the forefront of an ongoing wonderful civilization.
Imagine going into an office and telling the staff that they have to follow your philosophy. Imagine the reaction you would get if you said that in any other walk of life. Why would I offer that to my players?
Without poets, without artists, men would soon weary of nature's monotony. The sublime idea men have of the universe would collapse with dizzying speed. The order which we find in nature, and which is only an effect of art, would at once vanish. Everything would break up in chaos. There would be no seasons, no civilization, no thought, no humanity; even life would give way, and the impotent void would reign everywhere.
I once said a poet has the right to sing as loudly and vocally as he wants to. Most poets should face a rock n' roll audience for one night to keep them honest.
Speaking as an outsider is the most authentic voice for a poet. Poets who have one hundred thousand or one million readers [as many South Korean poets do] might not be a real, authentic poet.
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