Poets’ Roles in the Virginia Tech Tragedy

Poets are the first responders of the imagination when a community is faced with catastrophic events, whether natural or man-made. Witness the outpourings of poems in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, or Hurricane Katrina in 2005. One of our best contemporary American poets, Nikki Giovanni, is part of the Virginia Tech community. Naturally, her response to this week’s shootings comes in the form of a poem, read at the convocation honoring the dead on Tuesday: “We Are Virginia Tech.” It’s a powerful call to community, which brought the audience to its feet in a unison of identity, grief and hope, visible in many YouTube clips.

But the poets at Virginia Tech played a part in the tragedy before its denouement, before the writing of any response-poems, because they are teachers, too. In the fall of 2005, Seung-hui Cho was in one of Nikki Giovanni’s classes; his writing and his presence were so disturbing that she threatened to resign unless he was removed from the class. Then Virginia Tech English department head Lucinda Roy tutored Cho individually and was troubled enough by his writings and his demeanor to take special security precautions during their sessions and to report him to the campus police. Now, after the fact, his poems and plays are being analyzed as symptoms of the mental illness or the evil character that led to mass murder.

from The Baltimore Sun:
“We are brave enough,” by Jonathan Pitts
“If the word ‘unspeakable’ has any meaning, surely it applies to the acts of a South Korean loner whose shooting rampage at Virginia Tech left 33 dead this week. Perhaps only a poet could find the language to inspire at such a moment. Lucky for a shattered Hokie community, they have one for the ages on hand.”