By Gillian Kessler:
Nikki Giovanni’s “Ego Tripping” is full of fire and grit. This powerful, imaginative work is both hyperbolic and historical, her images replete with global abandon. After reading the poem, imitate the sweeping, confident style and proclaim all your radness on the page. This is a place to go wild with imagery and fantasy.
Begin with the lines “I was born . . . / I walked . . . / I designed . . . / I am . . . ,” etc. See where your imagination takes you as you explore the parts of yourself that lie in your imagination, your history—both the known and the unknown.
Ego Tripping (there may be a reason why)
By Nikki Giovanni
I was born in the congo
I walked to the fertile crescent and built
the sphinx
I designed a pyramid so tough that a star
that only glows every one hundred years falls
into the center giving divine perfect light
I am bad
I sat on the throne
drinking nectar with allah
I got hot and sent an ice age to europe
to cool my thirst
My oldest daughter is nefertiti
the tears from my birth pains
created the nile
I am a beautiful woman
I gazed on the forest and burned
out the sahara desert
with a packet of goat's meat
and a change of clothes
I crossed it in two hours
I am a gazelle so swift
so swift you can't catch me
For a birthday present when he was three
I gave my son hannibal an elephant
He gave me Rome for mother's day
My strength flows ever on
My son noah built new/ark and
I stood proudly at the helm
as we sailed on a soft summer day . . .
I sowed diamonds in my back yard
My bowels deliver uranium
the filings from my fingernails are
semiprecious jewels
On a trip north
I caught a cold and blew
My nose giving oil to the Arab world
I am so hip even my errors are correct
I sailed west to reach east and had to round off
the earth as I went
The hair from my head thinned and gold was laid
across three continents
I am so perfect so divine so ethereal so surreal
I cannot be comprehended except by my permission
I mean . . . I . . . can fly
like a bird in the sky . . .
Share the poem and then define hyperbole. If you were to talk about yourself in the most exaggerated sense, bragging about your fabulousness, what would you say? Sometimes it’s fun to have the opportunity to brag, to celebrate, to proclaim. My 7th grader, Ruby, a few years back certainly captured Giovanni’s essence in her wonderful inspired poem below.
Dangerous Medicine
By Ruby Jenni, 7th grade
(inspired by Nikki Giovanni’s “Ego Tripping”)
I was born in a nobody town called Bozeman, MT
I fell from the sky
breaking the earth where I landed,
leaving a scar so noticeable
they had to call me a meteorite
I radiate so much light
the sun hides itself away in shame
Everything I see will be my kingdom
and mine alone
I built the mountains as monuments in my name
My fury growled so fiercely I took an axe to the world
cracking open the Mariana Trench
My hair whips through the wind
creating threatening blizzards
I wove time together just to
make an unsolvable puzzle, each piece scarred with history
The stars rush down to blaze
across my cheek bones
The crescent moon forming on my brow,
an eternal crown
Cleopatra and I strode over the earth
Conquering love, and laughing at Rome,
who so many claim to have created
I cried at her death
My tears mixed with her salty blood
formed the Red and Black Seas
I lead the revolution for France
Joan of Arc and I arm in arm
When they sleep, wild creatures dream of me,
we run through forests, lightning crackles behind us
I am a poison that saves and a medicine that kills
From my encounter with Lewis Carroll he imagined
the fearsome Jabberwocky,
giving a dire warning to all who approach it
I was a pirate captain who ruled the waves
with a crew of savages
Treasure in their hearts and knives between their teeth
From the crashing ocean of my mind I created a pearl
so round, and so perfect,
I modeled the earth after it
When I shout towering trees shoot through the rough ground,
so old and tough no blade will ever bring it rushing down
When I sigh it sends wind's so cold
they created barren snow covered tundras
The swoop of my long coat
sending out an iridescent tide of Northern Lights
My bootprint made the Nazca lines,
worshipped as messages from the gods
The immortally spangled night sky
Is my wings,
one flap and I soar through the centuries
I am so untamed, so inconceivable, so extraordinary
I will not be moved nor trapped except by my own philosophies
I will be forever and always
Yet only glimpsed in seconds…
Gillian Kessler is a poet, teacher, and a regular writer for Flapper Press. Her first published book of poems, Lemons and Cement, is available for purchase.