http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/poetry/kidnap.html
In the Kidnap Poem, the speaker (Nikki Giovanni) uses first person to justify the purpose of her poem. As you approach the poem, it is evident that the format of her poem is slightly different being that there are no stanzas. This could symbolically mean that she wants you to feel the rhythm of being kidnapped where there are no pauses or stops because it all happens at once. The audience she seems to be targeting is the white population as opposed to the black. You can infer this by her line “put you in my phrases and meter” as if she wants to hide the audience in her thoughts and rhythm so that maybe they would understand her point of view. The speaker uses a radical or far-reaching point of view to capture the depth of her experiences and share them with her audience. She begins her poem with a question which is a more complex approach than her other poems. She writes “ever been kidnapped by a poet”. By analyzing this line the reader is able to take away that she wants to know if her audience has ever been taken from their home by words. She leaves the question unanswered by not using any punctuation marks as if to infer that these words are never ending. The effect of using the word “kidnapped” allows the reader to imagine someone being taken out of their control. In this poem you are also able to depict the motif of repetition as she begins her poem with restating it in the end as if she was referring to herself in the entire poem. She concludes by stating “yeah if I were a poet I’d kidnap you.” This in itself lets the audience know that if she was a poet, she transform them. I was also able to pull out the motif of culture within line 16, where she states “I’d wrap you in the red Black and green which symbolizes that she wants to wrap the audience in her culture (specifically black since it is capitalized).
In the Kidnap Poem, the speaker (Nikki Giovanni) uses first person to justify the purpose of her poem. As you approach the poem, it is evident that the format of her poem is slightly different being that there are no stanzas. This could symbolically mean that she wants you to feel the rhythm of being kidnapped where there are no pauses or stops because it all happens at once. The audience she seems to be targeting is the white population as opposed to the black. You can infer this by her line “put you in my phrases and meter” as if she wants to hide the audience in her thoughts and rhythm so that maybe they would understand her point of view. The speaker uses a radical or far-reaching point of view to capture the depth of her experiences and share them with her audience. She begins her poem with a question which is a more complex approach than her other poems. She writes “ever been kidnapped by a poet”. By analyzing this line the reader is able to take away that she wants to know if her audience has ever been taken from their home by words. She leaves the question unanswered by not using any punctuation marks as if to infer that these words are never ending. The effect of using the word “kidnapped” allows the reader to imagine someone being taken out of their control. In this poem you are also able to depict the motif of repetition as she begins her poem with restating it in the end as if she was referring to herself in the entire poem. She concludes by stating “yeah if I were a poet I’d kidnap you.” This in itself lets the audience know that if she was a poet, she transform them. I was also able to pull out the motif of culture within line 16, where she states “I’d wrap you in the red Black and green which symbolizes that she wants to wrap the audience in her culture (specifically black since it is capitalized).
The fact that she is speaking in first person using “I” and “you” permits the reader to better understand the message of the poem which is that she is willing to use her words and metaphors to change the world and see things from her perspective.
Way off. This is a Love poem, from a Black person to another Black person.
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