Back in 1980, when Dr. Neal Lester, now an Arizona State University professor, was an undergrad, he took a poetry class, and got assigned to write a paper interpreting the work of a notable poet. He picked Nikki Giovanni, the world-famous civil rights icon who died Dec. 9 at 81.
Lester’s professor encouraged him to write to Giovanni. So, Lester sent her a letter asking for her guidance in interpreting her poetry. He wasn’t expecting a response — but much to his surprise, a few weeks after he sent his letter, Giovanni wrote back. So began a lifelong correspondence and friendship, which Lester recently chronicled in an essay for the journal Public Humanities.
Lester joined The Show to talk about his feeling of disbelief when he got Giovanni’s first letter in the mail.
Full conversation
NEAL LESTER: And here's what her letter said:
“Dear Neal Lester, sorry this is so late. My father had a stroke, and I've not been in New York City very much. Hope you haven't graduated! Exclamation point. Or hope you have, which is even better. I have no insight on my poetry. Hope you'll forgive me if I've strung you out, Though, of course, by the student you are, you came through with flying colors, right? Nikki Giovanni.”
So even that there was a spirit of cheering and a spirit of I've got confidence in you.
SAM DINGMAN: But I also really love the line where she says, “I have no insight into my poetry.” But you did, in analyzing her poetry collection “My House” in 1983, among other things you wrote, quote, “all of Giovanni's poetry in My House is about love.”
And then you also wrote that it reveals, quote, “the true working not only of a stimulated intellect, but more importantly of a throbbing heart.”
LESTER: Yes. I think there was a certain kind of accessibility that I had not experienced when I read other poets. There's a poem in there called “When I Nap.”
“When I nap usually after 1:30 because the sun comes in my room, then hitting the northeast corner, I lay at the foot of my bed and smell the sweat of your feet in my covers while I dream.”
And I found in her poetry a way in which the everyday could be elevated.
DINGMAN: If I understand the timeline correctly, after this initial exchange of letters in 1980, several decades go by. And in 2011, she gets invited to give a keynote at ASU, where by this time you have become the dean of humanities.
LESTER: There was a whole lot of energy in that room. She would just spontaneously sort of start singing Motown, and the audience would start singing also. It's like being at a concert, you know. But this was a poet who was talking to us like we were having a fireside chat and joking and just saying all kinds of things uncensored.
DINGMAN: Well, you ended up developing this long term relationship with her as her pen pal, and if, if I'm not mistaken that she made that offer to you at that keynote.
LESTER: Yes.
DINGMAN: So I'm curious to know, did you write her the the first letter or or did she write you the first letter?
LESTER: The first letter was in a thank you note that she wrote to me for hosting that event. And it's on her very heavy stock, Nikki Giovanni stationery, and it says, “Dear Neal, what a wonderful evening. I'm so pleased to have been invited to the party.”
And then the next one came thereafter to invite us to The Sheer Good Fortune, which was in 2012, and that was the celebration of Toni Morrison that she spearheaded.
DINGMAN: Yes, I wanted to ask you about the the celebration of Toni Morrison because one of the things that that comes through so clearly in your recollections of her is this quality of, of playfulness and this reflexive intimacy.
And in 2012 when Toni Morrison's son passed away, she invited you, Nikki Giovanni did, to an event at Virginia Tech where Giovanni taught because Morrison, in her, in Giovanni's words, “needed to be hugged by the world to which she had given so much.”
LESTER: Yes.
DINGMAN: But one of the things that really stands out in, in your recollection of this is that she sat you next to Toni Morrison at the event and then in a letter confided in you about why she did that. Can you tell us that story?
LESTER: Well, you know, I got the invitation, and it was a formal invitation, but I never knew that she had gotten some pushback and having me at the table with Toni Morrison. And she later wrote in one of those notes that Toni was so excited, she likes to be in the company of handsome men. I'm like, oh, OK, I'll take that. I'll take that. And, and that's what it was.
And then late in that same note, she said, yeah, yeah, yeah, people were upset but I didn't really care. And this was authentic and genuine. And there was nothing that she was expecting out of me.
DINGMAN: Yes, well, the thing that comes through so clearly to me in that anecdote through your recollection of it is that she wanted to put together this event for Toni Morrison as much because Toni Morrison is the person that she is in the literary world, but also because she was a mother who had lost a son.
And she was Nikki Giovanni's friend, and she wanted to make her feel good, and she obviously respected you as a scholar by that point, and she also knew that Toni Morrison would get a kick out of sitting next to you. And like there's just something so it's like all of, all of it is true, and she, she related it to you in this way, like it, it trusted you to understand the full breadth of, of what was happening.
LESTER: Well, and that's, that's interesting because one of the notes said that. One of the notes said something about “thank you for trusting me.” I had no reason not to trust her and I guess maybe, you know, in my kind of questioning, how did I fit into this, this circle that she created, I have to trust that she knew.
DINGMAN: Well, it, I, I have such a sense that she really felt like she could talk to you. Because there's, there's also this amazing story from 2014 after the death of Maya Angelou, where in the midst of all these public proclamations about how marvelous and flawless Maya Angelou was, which of course she was, at a certain point, Giovanni pulls you aside and tells you a secret.
LESTER: Well, that was her though. She's like, you know, Maya fancied herself a good cook, but she was not half as good as she thought she was, and I thought I would die. So there are all these sort of wonderful moments that to me, were part of what the poetry grows out of, and that is a love for people and a love for connecting with folks.
DINGMAN: Yes, and, and that is why for me, Dr. Lester, if I may, the the most striking part of your recollections of her is the moment, also in 2014, when she comes to Mesa Arts Center for an event and you sit down to interview her and you ask her,” are we losing our humanity?” Tell us what she said.
LESTER: Her response without a beat was, “whenever did we have it?” Because the history of this country is not necessarily a, a history that is about declaring humanity. And in fact, it's anything but that. It was just she's that honest.
DINGMAN: Yeah. And yet in, in spite of that sentiment, which has, you know, a certain amount of cynicism to it, in 2015, she wrote an endorsement for ASU's Project Humanities' statement of principles, and she wrote, quote, “Life is a good idea.”
LESTER: Yes, that's what I am very excited about is this notion that she could hold both of those things at the same time without necessarily feeling like I had to choose one or the other. And I did share that with her, after the election, and I said something to the effect of, “well, I just had a good cry.” And her response was, her response was typically Nikki: “Cultivate your garden and keep your job.”
There was some other stuff that I will, that I will not necessarily share.
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