Hokies
As some of you may know, Perigee's founding editor attended Virginia Tech in 1996, 1997, and 1998—living in West Ambler Johnston dormitory, where Monday's shooting began.
A close friend (Jim Keane, who currently attends Virginia Tech) took these shots yesterday:
Our thoughts and prayers are with the entire Hokie Nation, and the Blacksburg community as a whole. We hope our readers will join us in wearing orange and maroon this Friday, April 20th, in memory of those who lost their lives.
(Photographs: ©2007 Jim Keane)
A close friend (Jim Keane, who currently attends Virginia Tech) took these shots yesterday:
Our thoughts and prayers are with the entire Hokie Nation, and the Blacksburg community as a whole. We hope our readers will join us in wearing orange and maroon this Friday, April 20th, in memory of those who lost their lives.
(Photographs: ©2007 Jim Keane)
posted by Robert Woerheide at 10:40 AM
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I’ll admit, on Tuesday, I did not watch the Virginia Tech Convocation. As I tried to make sense of Cho Seung-Hui’s outrageous acts of violence, and the continued justification for far too little legislation on gun control in this country, I turned to my usual source of objective reporting, “The News Hour” on PBS. Only short clips of the many representatives of the world’s major religions were given: they sought to offer comfort and wisdom to all us who are grieving. Even President Bush, reading a speech, I’m sure was sincere in the offering his condolences.
Often, in the contemporary world of literature, there are many discussions about whethe poetry is working in our popular culture today. At the Virginia Tech Convocation on Tuesday night, we had the opportunity to see the poet Nikki Giovanni raise the spirit of the “Hokies.” I believe her poem took the audience at the auditorium and the audiences at home to a place where poetry can take us: to the depths of our souls. By viewing it at the following website, you have the opportunity to feel how the power of poetry works in our culture:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snuc1hDDSiI
Here is the text of this powerful poem:
“We Are Virginia Tech”
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 being devastated for ivory
Neither does the Mexican child looking for fresh water
Neither does the Appalachian infant killed in the middle of night in his crib in the home its 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 heart 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 possibility
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
—Nikki Giovanni, a University Distinguished Professor of English, VPI&SU
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