Ego Tripping

In colloquial use, an ego trip is an experience that increases a person’s satisfaction with one’s self and/or enhances a person’s feelings of self-importance. The title of Giovanni’s poem signals that this poem is an unabashed celebration of personal identity; moreover, the images and allusions contained in the poem lift not only the poet’s sense of self as a Black woman, but that of the entire Black race and female gender. The musical rhythm of the poem enhances its celebratory feel, as joyful events are often accompanied by music complete with lively rhythms and interesting beats.

Structurally, “Ego Tripping” consists of eight stanzas, and they are neither uniform nor patterned. The free verse of the poem allows the rhythms of the language and the internal rhymes to dominate the poem’s aural experience. The poem’s distinctively musical quality means it is well-suited to performance, and Giovanni’s many recordings of “Ego Tripping” attest to the poem’s success as a piece of spoken word.

Though the poem is full of proper nouns like place names and names of individuals, the only capitalized words in the poem are the pronouns “I” and “My” which start most of the lines of the entire poem.