According to the Poetry Foundation, Nikki Giovanni’s recent collection of love poems, Bicycles, ranks as the best selling multi-poem volume of 2009. Though the collection contains several poems of merit, Bicycles is largely composed of poetry that does not introduce us to love or relationships in ways that are special or profound. Most of the poems, though energetic, are energetic in all the usual ways; they do not show us love or life in the fresh expression of new poetry. Instead, we often see the typical drama of love presented as just that: overly dramatic and overly emotional.

There is, then, a burdensome triteness to the love poems of Bicycles. The book does not introduce us to new reflections, but rather, mires us in overwrought emotions. “My Sleep,” for example, engages the realization that the ideals in our minds rarely reflect our imperfect realities. The poem is brief and somber in its illustration of this conflict: “In my sleep my conversation/is witty/My home is dusted… But then/when I’m asleep/I don’t have you/to clutter and confuse/My hungry heart” (28). We’ve all likely considered this conflict before—it is neither noteworthy nor illustrative, especially when the confusing and cluttering aspects of love are considered in contrast to the allegedly neat world of someone’s dreams.

Many of Giovanni’s poems merely cycle through the typical motions of melodrama. Consider “I Like the Dance.” The poem begins, “I like the dance/I like the idea/of you in my arms/I like the gentle sway...” continues similarly, and ends, “I like the way I feel in your arms” (31). Such work speaks with the all too familiar energies of a teenage drama queen. It is not great, though it has garnered a substantial readership as a consequence of its ability to relate with the mundane but often consuming emotional currents that affect so many of us.

There are some notable poems in Bicycles. “Gray Clouds Hover,” perhaps the most distinguished in the volume, artfully evokes both the cold sadness of solitude and the potential for its warm, optimistic independence. This latter sentiment is powerfully delivered with the poem’s last lines, “February is the shortest/month,” a nod to Eliot (54). This poem does not explore the typical motions of love, but rather, the shapes of life in love’s absence. Similarly, “A Fish Out of Water” captures the complex regrets of failed love—had love not proven so blinding, the lover might well have foreseen its inevitable shortness. The speaker likens her state to that of a fish out of water, lamenting her failure to distinguish “The end of this story/At the beginning/Instead of/At the end” (106).

Sadly, Bicycles does not bring us the great poetry we should justly expect from America’s best selling poetry collection of 2009. Most of the poems treat love in only the most common of ways. They are not new, they are not great, and often, they are not interesting. Yet Giovanni excels in the poems where she reflects upon the malfunctions of love. In these pieces, she offers new ideas and penetrating metaphors that belie the simplicity that has rendered the love poem something of a cliché.