Bad Poetry

Saint Kansas has called the following poem by Nikki Giovanni, Virginia Tech "University Distinguished Professor" (despite only having a B.A.), as having great potential "in case any of you have ingested something poisonous and need to induce vomiting." What an apt description, especially when she bizarrely starts comparing Virginia Tech student and faculty members' lives lost to those affected by the crimes of Western Civilization, including a baby elephant:

(my analysis of the "poem" in brackets)

We are Virginia Tech

We are sad today
We will be sad for quite a while
We are not moving on

We are embracing our mourning

We are Virginia Tech [count the number of narcissistic "we's"]

We are strong enough to stand tall tearlessly [how is that strong?]
We are brave enough to bend to cry [how is that brave?]
And we are sad enough to know that we must laugh again [what?]

We are Virginia Tech

We do not understand this tragedy [a massacre, not a tragedy]
We know we did nothing to deserve it

But neither does a child in Africa
Dying of AIDS [what does this and the rest of this "poem" have to do with the massacre?]

Neither do the Invisible Children [why is Invisible Children capitalized? Where do these Invisible Children live?]
Walking the night away to avoid being captured by a rogue army [where, other than in Giovanni's imagination, is a rogue army capturing Invisible Children?]

Neither does the baby elephant watching his community
Be devastated for ivory [with this weird analogy, Giovanni has announced she believes baby elephants, like man, are capable of reason and logic.]
Neither does the Mexican child looking [Why break the line here?]
For fresh water [Okay. "For fresh water" is Profound and needs its own line]

Neither does the Iraqi teenager dodging bombs [tell that to Muslims and Al Qaeda]

Neither does the Appalachian infant killed
By a boulder [When has this ever occurred?]
Dislodged [She appears to give Dislodged its own line because it is Profound]
Because the land was destabilized [With all the national forests in the Appalachians, how can man "destabilize an entire mountain causing a boulder to strike an infant?].

No one deserves a tragedy [Yes, a boulder careening down a mountain aiming for a poor Appalachian child is a tragedy; a student gunning down 32 others is a massacre. Liberals don't understand the difference.]

We are Virginia Tech
The Hokie Nation embraces
Our own
And reaches out
With open heart and mind [as opposed to closed heart and mind?]
To those who offer their hearts and hands

We are strong
And brave
And innocent [what she is really saying here: As opposed to evil George Bush, considering the litany of abuses above he has committed such as allowing a boulder to kill an infant and making Invisible Children dodge bombs]
And unafraid

We are better than we think [narcissism alert]
And not yet quite what we want to be
We are alive to imagination [what?]

And open to possibility [as opposed to closed to possibility?]
We will continue
To invent the future [more narcissism. We have 32 dead victims and it is all about us]

Through our blood and tears [the victims' blood or our blood?]
Through all this sadness
We are the Hokies

We will prevail
We will prevail
We will prevail [Is this a Black Power convention of the 1970s?]

We are
Virginia Tech
Nikki Giovanni, delivered at the Convocation, April 17, 2007

Beside the self-centered number of "we's" that are immediately apparent reminding one of Father Paul Scalia's (son of Antonin Scalia) article about narcissism among liberal Catholics, the prose/poem demonstrates the way liberals deal with tragedy. They do not look outward at Truth, God, tradition, or absolute values to answer the question about why such a heinous act could occur; they narcissistically turn to themselves and immediately condemn Western Civilization.

Nikki, how do you think the parents of the victims feel about you comparing the deaths of their sons and daughters and the proportion of the atrocity to a "baby elephant watching his community be devastated for ivory?"

This poem is so awful in terms of structure (there is no logic to how she forms lines or stanzas except for the Spirit moving her), description, and meaning, it is difficult to judge where to start. First off, this act was an atrocity; it was not a "tragedy" as Giovanni asserts. Second, it is not "brave" to "bend to cry." It is a typical liberal narcissistic statement; true bravery and heroism is how Liviu Lebrescu acted: sacrificing his life for his students. Our "crying" is not brave.

I graduated from the Virginia Tech English department, and I do know that Nikki Giovanni is an open lesbian, whose lover Virginia Fowler (who does have a PhD.) wrote many flattering papers about Nikki Giovanni. She pushed Tech to hire Giovanni, which they did, despite Giovanni only having a B.A. Giovanni is paid several times more than the average PhD. She is considered the superstar of the campus. One of her first acts at Virginia Tech was to immediately diss the PhD professors in the English Department.

I mention the above because Matt Sanchez, Columbia undergraduate and marine corporal in the Reserves, has discussed the narcissism that is immediately apparent in Giovanni's poem as being endemic to gays who flaunt their sexuality. In an interview with Randy Thomas of Exodus, he compares their narcissism to the traditional ideals of the Marines and Christian Western Civilization:

There are no "Latino Marines, or Black Marines or Chinese Marines, there are just Marines. In that way, they're not different from Christians who have a non-segregation "We are all God's children" approach to their fellow Christians.

Conservatives feel there are intrinsic values, universal truths and that
humans--who are inherently flawed--can move toward those values. There's a fundamental divide between the two. Conservatives believe the truths are external and we as humans, people, souls can move closer and farther to these truths and that proximity, if you will, is what defines us. The liberal/gay fundamentalist side says that the individual is "that truth" and that he/she needs to just accept who one is. In other words, they as individuals are the sum of all things. They are the society, nation and religion of one … that one being the individual. They are subordinate to no one.

The prose message by the English department is far more profound and less narcissistic than Nikki Giovanni's "poem":

In the English Department at Virginia Tech, we deeply mourn our students and colleagues who have lost their lives, and we grieve with the families and friends who have experienced such devastating loss. We extend our arms in love to these people and to our students who survive.