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Poetry is the most mistaught subject in any school because we teach poetry by form and not by content.

Nikki Giovanni

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Nikki Giovanni
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: June 7
Poet
Teacher
Writer
Knoxville
Tennessee
Yolande Cornelia Giovanni
Jr
Subject
Subjects
Poetry
Education
Teach
Form
School
Content

More quotes by Nikki Giovanni

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We believe 'Peter Rabbit' because Beatrix Potter believes it. You have to.
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I used to go up to her house. She lived upstate [in New York] and I lived in Manhattan you're living in a lot of noise and my career was being built. For me to spend time with Nina [Simone] is to spend a lot of quiet time.
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I have not tried to tell the people anything. I have shared my views with the people but I have not tried to lead or correct them, assuming they need correction.
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Schools should serve breakfast, lunch and an afternoon snack. No sugared drinks, no fast type food.
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We [Black people] have always used our creativity to battle and we're not the only ones. Black Americans are certainly leaders in that simply because we were denied education and dealt with enforced illiteracy. But people seem to always forget that literacy is not the only way of learning things or conveying knowledge.
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[To write poems] I think it's important to do research, and research mostly is going to come from books, so all of your reading is potentially helpful to your poetry.
Nikki Giovanni
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Now, everything I do, I do because I want to. And I believe the best is yet to come.
Nikki Giovanni
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Black love is black wealth
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Who I really am keeps surprising me.
Nikki Giovanni
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We love because it's the only true adventure.
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It's really just interesting to ask: why not? And see where that takes me.
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If I could come back as anything - I'd be a bird, first, but definitely the command key is my second choice.
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We all have our muses. My grandmother and my mother are the people I write for. I'll never have to worry about who buys my work, or who likes it, and who doesn't. The people who I want to be proud of me already are.
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Art offers sanctuary to everyone willing to open their Hearts as well as their Eyes.
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I don't have a life-style, I have a life.
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I appreciate and enjoy my age.
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Floating to shore...riding a low moon...on a slow cloud.
Nikki Giovanni
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Facts are only tools to gain control over yourself and other people.
Nikki Giovanni
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School should be eleven months of the year.
Nikki Giovanni
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Follow your image as far as you can no matter how useless you think it is. Push yourself.
Nikki Giovanni