{"id":588,"date":"2007-04-20T00:54:24","date_gmt":"2007-04-20T06:54:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=588"},"modified":"2007-04-22T07:49:36","modified_gmt":"2007-04-22T13:49:36","slug":"poetry-friday-nikki-giovanni","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=588","title":{"rendered":"Poetry Friday: Nikki Giovanni"},"content":{"rendered":"

{Note: Today’s Poetry Friday round-up is over here<\/a><\/strong> at Big A, little a} . . . <\/em><\/p>\n

VTTrees are never felled . . . in summer . . . Not when the fruit . . .
\nis yet to be borne . . . Never before the promise . . . is fulfilled . . .
\nNot when their cooling shade . . . has yet to comfort . . .<\/p>\n

…from A Poem on the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy<\/strong><\/a>
\nby Nikki Giovanni<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Like everyone, I was stunned and horrified by the massacre at Virginia Tech on Monday. Like many, I have a friend who teaches there, and spent part of the day worrying, checking the VT website and the news, back and forth, waiting for them to release names of victims… until he got out of lockdown and answered his email. Thankfully, he did answer, and he is okay.<\/p>\n

MotherReader<\/strong><\/a> spoke very eloquently about the tragedy on her blog. So did Paul<\/strong><\/a>. I don’t think it’s my place to say anything here, and even if I did I wouldn’t know where to begin. It’s sick and it’s sad and it shouldn’t have happened, these things just shouldn’t happen, ever, to anyone.<\/p>\n

But I ran across this today on the Poetry Foundation<\/strong><\/a> website, and thought it was worth sharing. It’s Nikki Giovanni<\/strong><\/a>, who you probably know teaches at VT, speaking at their convocation on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

<\/param><\/param><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

{Addendum to post: We realize that at least one of our regular readers is deaf; we apologize for the lack of text here re Giovanni’s speech. Perhaps the Poetry Foundation or Virginia Tech itself will have the text printed somewhere. If anyone needs us to look for that, we’re happy to do so. Also, a portion of Giovanni’s speech is printed at A Wrung Sponge’s<\/em> Poetry Friday entry<\/a><\/strong> for today. Thanks} . . . <\/p>\n

{Addendum #2: Here<\/a><\/strong> is the transcript at Virginia Tech’s site; thanks to Marcie at World of Words<\/em><\/a><\/strong> for the link!} . . . <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{Note: Today’s Poetry Friday round-up is over here at Big A, little a} . . . Trees are never felled . . . in summer . . . Not when the fruit . . . is yet to be borne . . . Never before the promise . . . is fulfilled . . . […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry-friday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}