Life Cycles

In the poem “Life Cycles”, Nikki Giovanni talks about how her occurrences in life seem very continuous. The title connects back to things being continuous because of the word ‘Cycles’. A cycle is a repeated sequence of events.  I believe the poem is written from a 3^rd person point of view. The poet use the word ‘she’, which means it is spoken from a different point of view. Words like ‘dark’ and ‘sadness’ gives the poem an upsetting tone. The speaker talks about a hard life filled with darkness and negative behaviors. The poem then transitions to this young lady being around a boy that she liked and her mood changes. She’s no longer sad but nervous and anxious to be around this special individual. However, this made her life more frustrating than before. Giovanni closes the poems stating “she boxed her life like a special private seed planting it in her emotional garden to see what weeds would rise to strangle her”. This seem to show how she knew her feelings for anonymous lover, wasn’t how she should be feeling.  She wanted something in her life to capture her before she fell too deep. This is revealed when she talks about the weeds strangling her in the emotional garden. The rhetorical device that is used in this sentence would a personification.  The effect of the rhetorical device gives the reader an image and better understanding of obtaining something before it caught. The speaker wanted the reader to feel how strong the emotional connection was between her feelings and how she was suppose to feel , in order be to stay safe.