Wednesday, April 18, 2007

The Virginia Tech Massacre: Self-Immolation and The Poetry of Despair

As the media goes wild (especially NBC) and sends its anchors to Virginia Tech, the most insightful information comes from a true poet. No, the insight doesn’t come from this pathetic and incoherent young man, Cho, but from the great African American poet, Nikki Giovanni. By bizarre happenstance, a couple of years ago, Ms. Giovanni happened to have had Cho as a student in her poetry class at Virginia Tech. In a mind-blowing interview with the Associated Press, published late on Wednesday, Giovanni revealed that in September 2005, Cho was enrolled in her introduction to creative writing class.

According to Giovanni, from the beginning, he began building a wall between himself and the rest of the class. He wore sunglasses to class and pulled his maroon knit cap down low over his forehead. When she tried to get him to participate in class discussion, his answer was silence.

“Sometimes, students try to intimidate you,” Giovanni told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Wednesday. “And I just assumed that he was trying to assert himself.”

But then female students began complaining about Cho.

About five weeks into the semester, students told Giovanni that Cho was taking photographs of their legs and knees under the desks with his cell phone. She told him that was inappropriate and to stop, but the damage was already done.

Female students refused to come to class, submitting their work by computer instead. As for Cho, he was not adding anything to the classroom atmosphere, only detracting.

Police asked Giovanni not to disclose the exact content or nature of Cho’s poetry. But she said it was not violent like other writings that have been circulating.

It was more invasive.

“Violent is like, ‘I’m going to do this,”’ said Giovanni, a three-time NAACP Image Award winner. “This was more like a personal violation, as if Cho were objectifying his subjects, “doing things to your body parts.” See, CNEWS.

Shortly thereafter, Ms. Giovanni took action to protect her class. “There was no writing. I wasn’t teaching him anything, and he didn’t want to learn anything,” she said. “And I finally realized either I was going to lose my class, or Mr. Cho had to leave.” Giovanni wrote a letter to then-department head Lucinda Roy, who removed Cho. Roy alerted student affairs, the dean’s office, even the campus police, but each said there was nothing they could do if Cho had made no overt threats against himself or others.

That was two years ago. The story becomes more obscure and twisted. The facts will be recounted ad nauseum. After all of the words are spoken, we will be left with Nikki Giovanni’s insight and inspiration. It was she who spoke at the memorial service and filled the arena with hope: Giovanni brought the crowd at the memorial service to its feet and whipped the mourners into an almost evangelical fervor with the words: “We are the Hokies. We will prevail, we will prevail. We are Virginia Tech.” Then she added some words to help the devastated Virginia Tech community move toward the future, “We are strong and brave and innocent and unafraid. We are better than we think, not quite what we want to be. We are alive to the imagination and the possibility we will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears, through all this sadness.”

Nikki Giovanni saw Cho’s evil first, explained its nature to herself and now she has interpreted its meaning to the rest of us.

Savant