Wh is Nikki?
Does anyone know what the “Appalachian infant” thing is all about? Very strange, I thought.....
She’s always gotta be shilling for the cause, you know. Nothing takes precedence over the forward march of socialism.
What? Liberals are scum.
She is anything but coming together.
Well said. Thats insane.
“We know we did not deserve it but neither does”.... the audience here who has to listen to this baloney !!!
She disgraced the dedication of a monument in Cincinnati last year. She is a hater.
I am not a son of a bitch like Kenny Blackwell …
http://axinar.blogspot.com/2006/10/i-am-cincinnati-by-nikki-giovanni.html
Is anyone really surprised? After the Wellstone memorial, The Coretta scott King funeral that a leftist would use a grand stage like this to spew this absolute tripe. Especially in Academia.
How long is the VT circus in town anyway? I’m sure that there are at least 1,343 people who haven’t been interviewd or photo’d on tv yet..........
She's not saying that they're equivalent tragedies, she's saying that there's no reason behind the tragedy at Virginia Tech anymore than there's reason behind tragedies that happen anywhere in the world. Deserve has nothing to do with it, so be sad but don't be afraid.
Not her best by any stretch of the imagination, but I give Prof. Giovanni slack because she is writing one day after the incident.
Speaking of which, Nikki Giovanni is quite a talented poet and worth looking at for any FReeper poetry fans.
I was really hoping her speech was going to be good LOL
It just went from bad to worse and it had no heart
she did not even believe her own BS!
Imbecilic.
...the Appalachian infant in the 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...
So...this has been happening a lot lately?
Add sadness to even more sadness.
I initially posted this on another thread, but it seems much better placed here.
Nikki Giovanni is a token writer and an insignificant poet; her work is only considered important because it is endlessly and myopically preoccupied with race and the hagiography of civil rights figures. Langston Hughes was fine poet, Jean Toomer wrote a first-rate novel, and Derek Walcott matters, but Ms Giovanni is an intellectual waterfly. There are plenty of third-rate writers and dreary poets like bell hooks and Maya Angelou who also have armloads of awards and a standing invite to go on Oprah; it doesn’t matter, they are still awful.
The audience warmly embraced her because they don’t know any better; they are cowed into thinking she is deep because someone always trots out the litany of awards that are supposed to stand in for her obvious lack of talent. They are also held in the spell of white guilt and it occludes both their discernment and their taste. No thoughtful writer, at her age, would ever say something like this in public, ever:
“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 being 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”
It makes me wince just to read it. It is rubbish on so many different levels I don’t even know where to begin. Whatever their politics, no poet could utter such silly and sanctimonious drivel on such an occasion.
Incidentally, the sullen lunatic who murdered all these people was not college material; his writing is so appallingly bad that he should never have made it through any year in college, anywhere in the country, at any time in American history. But he was obviously passed along for years without the slightest hint of any talent whatsoever; no one gave him the rightful F he deserved because there are obviously no standards left. The same English department at VT that idolizes a phony like Ms. Giovanni was the same department who allowed the author of “Richard McBeef” to get as far as senior year. Sigh
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Sill leftist tripe.
That was one weird, rambling speech, before I turned it off anyway. Did it start to make some sort of sense at some point?
This part was totally uncalled for...and a disgrace to the entire VT student body.