Letters to the Editor
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you can take this evolutionary psychology too far, Anonymous
how can you explain a male's suicide over a broken heart - in far greater numbers than women? and since we are talking about cho, he *said* he was doing this "for his children" and then *made sure" that such would never come about. by the way, "Anonymous" what do you think about "faint heart never won lady fair"?
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I'm not suggesting that the "traditional" view of misogyny never describes reality
but it is often a serious oversimplification. Even in traditional socieites where men have, and are required to maintain or appear to maintain, a certain position, women often have great influence and "authority".
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I know it can be that's why
I tend to be reluctant to get started, anything that gets said is either too much or too little. In general though the fact that knowledge or a field of knowledge has been "compromised" doesn't mean that it has no validity at all.
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a female has to stay healthy for a good long time or her offspring won't surive
but for a male, but not for a female, there is not necessarilly always a relationship between how long they live and how many descendants they have.
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Re: Giovanni's poetry is not being read for its content.
From your perspective, from what I understand of it, you are saying the poem is instructing black men to kill internalized negative destructive self-harmful racist brainwashing. Yes, it's doing that. But it's also doing something else.
After Giovanni writes:
"Can you make your nigger mind
die
Can you kill your nigger mind"
This is followed immediately by:
"And free your black hands to
strangle
Can you kill
Can a nigger kill
Can you shoot straight and
Fire for good measure
Can you splatter their brains in the street"
"Their brains." That's not referring to something internalized, from my reading of it.
I completely disagree that a close reading of a poet's work is "disrespectful" - or contrasting the work of a poet when they were younger with their work when they are older. I know there are plenty of so-called "great" poets who are teaching creative writing classes, that if they were to face this same immense murder spree on their campus, might end up saying things that would make people familiar with their previous work say, "What? That's not the (fill in "great" poet's name) I'm familiar with." "We are the Hokies? Where did that come from? It's the poet's job now to engage in the simplest kind of us-against-them collegiate rah-rah-rah boosterism? THIS IS POETRY?????"
I am also bothered greatly by her reference to "tragedies" unrelated to violent male behavior. How many American cities have murder rates over 400 per year? That means EVERY MONTH on average in some American cities, the same number of people are being murdered. Oh, but unlike the African AIDS victims and the others Giovanni listed in her speech, I guess US homicide victims "deserved it?" Very troubling what Giovanni has said - speaking more like a professor than a poet, great or not, in my opinion. And last time I checked FBI statistics, homicide rates were greatest among NATIVE AMERICANS. Does that fact that she teaches at a university in a gun-friendly state, have anything to do with her omission of all these (often) gun-related tragedies???
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(i actually saw this in a speech given by a biologist) Raise your hands if you define "success" by the number of grandchildren you have.
(no one did). perhaps Ghenghiz Khan thought "numbers of offspring" were the most important. but ALL the men i know want to hang around and *raise* their children. of course we know what happens when they don't - they are raised by the "street" and the street doesn't do a great job of it. and that's part of evolutionary psychology too. salmon give their *lives* for their "children" - and they number in the thousands, but that's it, no raising at all. we have a different strategy. few children but they are given a better chance of carrying on the line.
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yes, Anonymous, the more i learn about Nikki Giovanni
the more she impresses me as a self-serving blow-hard. she does have a lot of talent, though.
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scar tissure, fever, inflammation,
all are evolved responses which are, in a general sense, useful, but they aren't always beneficial to us and they don't contain any particular moral message.
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Re: Early Giovanni
Anon, thanks for your interest. I'll meander through a few thoughts.
-I object to a poet choosing a handful of lines to make an argument about how another writer's work then and now -- at the expense of the work. While using very small snippets of text is useful approach and can be particularly illuminating when done with care, I did not see anything remotely approaching close reading.
-I agree with you about the other elements of the poem, and it's literal violence, but I was responding to a specific argument using specific lines earlier in the discussion. Still, I hold fast to my reading of the poem's primary subject(s). While we could deconstruct the value a title has in informing content, I am going to hazard a guess that poetics and politics of Negro and Black in relationship to the war in Viet Nam are at the center of the work.
-I did touch lightly on the political context of the time, which foregrounded revolutionary politics. Groups like the Panthers advocated armed solutions. The rhetoric of the poem is in keeping with voices of the time. That plurality of voice is relevant. It is not exceptional in the way Cho's writing was in his community. There is no movement, no revolution. People want to talk about school shooting, but these events are in a tradition of contemptuous, 'shock and awe' domestic terrorism so specific (Oklahoma City) as to always occur in the same week of a calendar year.
-We can assume her reader would also be reading work by Eldridge Cleaver, we can also assume that reader is Black or becoming Black in the process of reading. While even a white woman can attain a sort of Blackness in the sense of decolonizing her mind, ultimately the work simply isn't written for her. Someone early in the thread pointed to the apparent absence of Cho's reader.
-As far as the comparison of the two works go -- they are both intended to affirm, motivate and in a sense liberate a group of people from a burden(of trauma, oppression). Giovanni's actually consistent, but consistent with regard to tone(exhortation) and form (repetition).
"Learn to be Black men"
and
"We are the Hokies, we will prevail"
are far more alike than they are different when examined as art, not evidence. From looking only at these 2 works -- Giovanni likes to come out on top, what changes is the oppressor. I don't know that I would have chosen the earlier poem to make an argument about how she has matured.
There's a lot to say about times, their touchstones and these two works. I like Salon because it isn't a place to flesh out a tight essay but to touch on a few of many thoughts. The use and abuse of art is something the arouses my sensitivities.