I PUT THE CULTURE ON THE COUCH

I met Nikki Giovanni when our respective book tours crossed paths many years ago. She is one of the most accessible, generous, and fierce warrior women on the planet, definitely written into my Book of the Blessed.

Below is her chant-poem she spoke this morning at the convocation, the first meeting of the student body, faculty and administration since the massacre yesterday. (See and hear her high oratory at http://www.cnn.com/ under heading â€œCheers, ‘Let’s go Hokies chants memorialâ€?.)

Prior to her speaking, an Imam spoke, a Buddhist, a Christian minister, and a Jewish woman Rabbi spoke eloquently accompanied by a soulful woman Hebrew reader, reading the couplets of the poem from Ecclesiastes, â€œFor Everything There is a Season…â€?

And then after all others had spoken, including the President of Virginia Tech, the Governor of Virginia, and The President of the United States, George Bush… then Nikki took the stage…

Her chant-poem from the powerful broadcasting towers of her heart and mind, spoke of real and far-reaching thoughts….. and she and her words received the long, longer and longest standing ovation of the day… Why? I think many would say because she reached authentically into the souls of those present, with thoughts gallactically beyond the usual ceremonial words that seem nowadays, so rote and impersonal they could fit any solemn occasion.

Her poet-words were not only specific to the soul of her community, they were specific to the world soul. The headline of my article here could as easily have been: â€œPoet’s Words Far Outshine Those From the Leader of the Free World.â€?

Nikki Giovanni’s Chant-Poem

We Are Virginia Tech

We are sad today

and we will be sad for quite a while

… we are Not moving on

We are embracing our mourning

We are Virginia Tech

We are strong enough

to stand tall tearlessly

We are brave enough

to bend to cry

And sad enough

to know we must laugh again

We are Virginia Tech

We do not understand this tragedy

We know we did nothing to deserve it

But neither does a child in Africa dying of AIDS

Neither do the invisible children walking the night away

to avoid being captured by a rogue army

Neither does the baby elephant

watching his community be devastated for ivory

Neither does the Mexican child looking for fresh water

Neither does the Appalachian infant killed in the middle of the night

in his crib in the home his father built with his own hands

being run over by a boulder because the land was destabilized

NO one deserves a tragedy

We … are Virginia Tech

The Hokie Nation embraces our own

and reaches out with open hearts and hands

to those who offer their hearts and minds

We are strong

and brave

and innocent

and unafraid

We are better than we think, and

not quite what we want to be

We are alive

to the imagination and the possibilities

We will continue to invent the future

through our blood and tears

Through all this sadness,

We are The Hokies!

We will …prevail!

We will prevail

We will prevail

We ARE… Virginia Tech.



(Transcribed from rough audio by cpe: any errors are mine and not Dr. Giovanni’s. Line breaks, capitalization, and punctuation therein are only speculative.)