Jamel Rosales

Professor Wilson

ENG 123

May 17, 2018

What Could Have Been

Nikki Giovanni’s “Walking Down Park” poem is an insightful piece that explores the

topic of how today’s industrialized world took over the nature-dominant world of the past. For

hundreds of years, humans have taken from nature with no regards of the consequences that

came with their decisions. Giovanni argues that man made structures and industrialization has

destroyed the simplistic beauty of nature and life through an unorthodox structure of intense

imagery, various metaphors and analogies​.

Giovanni paints a picture in the reader’s head by using intense imagery to emphasize how

nature has changed in today’s industrialized world​.​ Throughout the poem, Giovanni refers back

to the past and speaks on a “what if” standpoint to communicate her idea in more depth​.​ An

example of this is in the first stanza when Giovanni writes:

walking down park

Amsterdam

or columbus do you ever stop

to think what it looked like

before it was an avenue

did you ever stop to think

 what you walked

before you rode​.

Everyday, we walk on pavement that was put down by workers and it covers the soil of

history and memories that came before us​.​ Giovanni takes us back to the past with this quote

because she makes us think how the environment looked before there were roads that we travel

on a daily basis​.​ Giovanni aims to make the readers contemplate what was in that spot before it

was industrialized and what the environment meant to people of the past and how they used it to

their benefit and happiness​. ​Giovanni aims to paint another picture with a quote that reads:

ever look south

on a clear day and not see

time’s square but see

tall Birch trees with sycamores

touching hands

and see gazelles running playfully after the lions​.

This quote is intended to make readers ponder what Times Square in New York was

before it was actually Times Square​.​ Before the area was what it is now, Giovanni would have

liked to paint the picture in her head and believed that it was a great big grassland that had many

trees that would touch each other while animals played freely and went about their days​. ​Instead,

it is now a big business as well as a tourist attraction​. ​She uses a lot of intense imagery to help
the reader see what today’s world is from what it used to be​.​ Man made structures and

industrialization shattered the beauty of nature that quite possibly will never be the same again​.

Nikki Giovanni also uses various analogies to contrast the past and present​.​ Her analogies

put an emphasis on how different both nature and life are from today’s world and from what the

world was before humans were so heavily industrialized​.​ Giovanni still speaks with a “what if”

standpoint to get her point across in a figurative way​.​ In the second stanza, Giovanni writes:

did you ever maybe wonder

what grass was like before

they rolled it

into a ball and called

it central park​.

Her analogy contrasts the man made world and the natural world and how much different

they are​.​ Before the industrial driven world, grass grew naturally in spots where it wanted to

grow​.​ On the other hand, in today’s world, we tear up and pull out grass from certain areas so we

can build over it​. ​We also have rolls of grass that we lay down in designated areas that do not

grow naturally​.​ Giovanni uses another clever analogy that reads:

before you rode

subways to the stock

exchange (we can’t be on

the stock exchange

 we are the stock

exchanged)​.

The analogy is that we are the stock, exchanged; meaning that we have been exchanged

for something else​. ​We used to be less industrialized and nature​-​friendly, but we exchanged that

for man made buildings and industries​. ​We gave up one way of living for another and therefore

we are the stock, ​exchanged​. ​Because of the change of lifestyles, people now live busier lives.

A final stylistic choice Nikki Giovanni uses to get her point across, that industrialization

destroyed the beauty of life itself, is her use of metaphors​.​ She still speaks with her “what if”

standpoint to help emphasize her point more in depth​.​ In the second stanza, Giovanni writes:

ever want to know what would happen

if your life could be fertilized

by a love thought

from a loved one

who loves you​.

This quote brings up the idea of how industries create hectic lifestyles; and so, we no

longer get to sit back and appreciate the beauty of life itself​.​ Taking a moment to appreciate life

can bring people happiness, but we no longer have the time to do that​. ​We try to live lives that

push us to our breaking points to get what we want, but when we get what we want, we are not

happy​.​ In reality, we would achieve true happiness if we realized that it is the small things in life

that bring us the most joy, “a love thought ​/​ from a loved one ​/ ​who loves you” (lines 24-26).
The beauty of life and love is what makes people happy, not materialistic items made by

industries​.​ Giovanni uses another metaphor that reads:

ever wonder why

so much asphalt was laid

in so little space

probably so we would forget the Iroquois, Algonquin

and Mohicans who could caress the earth​.

We laid down asphalt and forgot about the Iroquois, Algonquin and Mohicans, all who

were Native American Indians who appreciated nature and who would “caress the earth” (lines

49-50). Giovanni is saying that we are building not only over nature and the memories that were

made there, but also the people who appreciated nature and life and the beauty that it brought​.

Something Nikki Giovanni does very well is her ability to imagine as well as getting

people to do the same through her writing. In her poem, she pushes to raise awareness and ables

us to imagine what she has painted in her head. In an interview with Giovanni, she claims that

“everything has to start with the imagination, no matter what” (28). The significance of her

imagination on this topic is key in getting people to see what she sees in hope of getting

humanity to change the way they treat our planet. She also claims that “if we start with teaching

you as a student to trust yourself, to trust your imagination, then we are going to have a better

human being—and a human being who’s thinking a little bit beyond the pale, and that’s what we

want you to do” (28-29). Giovanni tries hard to push the younger generation to think beyond the

present so that their futures are better than what they would have been. She makes it key to trust
our imagination because it is more powerful than we deem it to be. Using our imaginations will

help us as humans be better people as well as treat our planet better.

The simplistic beauty of nature and life itself was quickly destroyed when man began

making structures in place for it and began to industrialize a number of different environments

where animals lived and nature flourished. Now, a nature dominant world is only a world what

could have been​.​ Nikki Giovanni emphasized these points by many different stylistic choices

such as: intense imagery, metaphors and analogies​. ​Although we can not bring back the beauty

of what nature and life once was in industrialized areas, we can always stay away from

non-industrialized areas and conserve the naturalistic beauty in those places​.

Words :1262
 Work Cited

“Walking Down Park.” ​Nikki Giovanni​,

nikkigiovanniib.weebly.com/walking-down-park.html.

Giovanni, Nikki. "A Visit with Nikki Giovanni."

About Campus​, vol. 20, no. 5, Nov/Dec2015, pp. 28-31. EBSCO​host​,

doi:10.1002/abc.21218.