We often think of poetry as something that’s experienced in an intensely private context – a quiet one-to-one communication across time and space between the poet and a single silent reader. But poetry is also famously performative; just ask Homer, whose epic recitations turned The Iliad into the chart-topping bop of 850 BC.

Few contemporary poets have embodied this public dimension of poetry as dynamically and charismatically as Nikki Giovanni, who died December 9 at the age of 81. She delivered her poetic writing, spiked with short lines and resonating consonants and driving syncopation and concrete details like okra and coffee cups and kitchen cabinets, to capacity crowds at Lincoln Center with audiences joining in and clapping along, kind of like the Eras Tour with fewer costume changes. The exuberant Reverend Ike, who served as Master of Ceremonies for one of these concerts, called the event “a rocking, gospel good time.” No lies detected; go read her classic poem “Ego Tripping” – it’s a bona fide banger. She could also bring the house down in vastly more somber contexts; her stirringly lyrical message of sorrow and resilience after the mass shooting at Virginia Tech – where the perpetrator had been in one of Giovanni’s classes – received a cathartic minute-long standing ovation.

The public element of Giovanni’s poetry extended to its confrontation of the world in which she wrote. She came up as a leader of the politically engaged Black Arts Movement that also gave the world Audre Lorde and Gil Scott-Heron; she was quoted in her youth as saying that she “used to dream militant dreams of taking over America to show these white folks.” Later in her life when she’d become one of the country’s few established popular poetic figures playing to large and diverse audiences, that dreamt-of takeover arguably at least partially fulfilled, her tone wasn’t always as fiery. But she never abandoned her commitment to combating hatred and violence, and to promoting racial and gendered empowerment.

The live oral element that had always been such a vital component of Giovanni’s poetic voice is now sadly taken from us, but her words aren’t going anywhere; enjoy her inimitable vision through some of these library holdings.