Analyzing "Nikki-Rosa" by Nikki Giovanni
When I was looking through the poems of section two in our class poetry book I saw that the last poem was by Nikki Giovanni. I really loved whenever Ms.Giovanni came and spoke to our school a couple months ago so I though it would be cool to actually read some of her work that she is so well known for. The poem I read is called "Nikki-Rosa" and since our section is of Childhood memories I predicted that the title was about Nikki's childhood nickname & experiences from her past.
The very first thing I noticed when glancing at the poem I noticed that there were no uppercase letters. But then I looked closely and noticed that only the words 'Black', 'Woodlawn', 'Chicago', 'Christmas', & 'Hollydale' were in uppercase letters out of the entire poem. Giovanni used a few literary techniques in this poem such as enjambment, tone, rep and some consonance.
An example of enjambment is"childhood remembrances are always a drag if you're Black". But the entire poem is filled with enjambment from each and every line. An example of consonance is "...you always remember things like living in Woodlawn with no inside toilet and if you become famous or something..." I saw a consonance pattern of -ing within those three lines. I also noticed that Giovanni's tone transitions from just a story of memories into defense of the memories.
An example of enjambment is"childhood remembrances are always a drag if you're Black". But the entire poem is filled with enjambment from each and every line. An example of consonance is "...you always remember things like living in Woodlawn with no inside toilet and if you become famous or something..." I saw a consonance pattern of -ing within those three lines. I also noticed that Giovanni's tone transitions from just a story of memories into defense of the memories.
Lauren, you are noticing some relevant things in the poem, but make sure you are going beyond noticing techniques to thinking about the effect of those techniques. Also, watch "when" vs. "whenever." Because Dr. Giovanni only came to school once, you should use "when."
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