| Ellen Levine: The Eye of the Tiger Whe Ellen Levine was being interviewed by a New York public radio station this year regarding her most recent young adult novel about the McCarthy era, her host said," I'm surprised that with all the innocent people who are falsely accused, you instead chose to write about communists." Levine's novel Catch a Tiger by the Toe tells the story, from the point of view of an ordinary 13-year-old girl, of an American family in the fifties who is persecuted for holding left wing political views. "Innocent? Gulty?" she said. "What had they done? They had political beliefs. They were not spies; they fought for tenants' rights and civil rights." Yet they and thousands like them lost their jobs and homes or were jailed, some merely for reading "Red" newspapers, writes Levine. Before the interview, her host asked with some worry in his voice, "Do you address the other side?" "What other side?" she said. For, in the words of Harry S. Truman,"The House Un-American Activities Committee" of which McCarthy was an aggressive part, "is the most un-American thing in America." For those of you born more recently, following WWII, America became obsessed with the idea that communists were going to take over the world (as they had taken over Russia). While socialist and communist parties coexisted with right wing parties in European democracies, in America in the 1950s-"a time most associate with crinolines and Peter-Pan collars," says Levine, "laws were passed that made it extremely difficult to be communist or socialist." Levine's bookwould seem eerily timely, as government appointees to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting have been using public moneyto study shows like Now for liberal bias, mistakenly listing people like Chuck Hegel (a conservative Republican senator) as a liberal because he critized the president's handling of the Iraq war, and threatening such shows with funding cuts, according to the New York Times. Ellen's host was understandably worried that by interviewing her, his show might be cut. Based on massive research and dozens of interviews with people who were children during this era, Levine's novel shows what it's like to be stopped in the street by FBI and to be asked to tell what your parents were reading. Levine's seventeen books span a variety of issues mostly in the non-fiction genre. She's written about ballet superstar Anna Pavlova, the underground railroad, the Treaty Oak in Texas, and Japanese internment camps. Her book, Freedom' Children, winner of the Jane Addams Children's Book Award, consists of the narratives of people who were child activists during civil rights movement like Rosa Parks. Her picture book, I Hate English, demonstrates the often overlooked genius of children's books. Telling the story of a chinese immigrant who refuses to learn English, Levine writes with surface beauty and simplicity, yet depicts the complex sense of loss immigrants feel when learning a new language. It reads like a finely honed poem. Lawyer, sculptor, filmmaker, and teacher at Vermont College's MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults program, published by the best and winner of several awards, Levine humanizes history for young adults while simultaneously reminding adults of the important contributions children have made to history. --Lale Davidson
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| Tuesday, October 25, 2005 • 12:30 p.m.- 2:00 p.m • Library Auditorium • Crandall Library |
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| (Why) Does Poetry Matter? To play off Dickinson and Woody Allen, you know a good poem because it feels like you've stuck your finger in a light socket and the top of your head is exploding- "but in a good way," as my used to say. Taking time for poetry seemed, for awhile, akin to chucking what's important to wrap ourselves in crumbling shawls of vanity. That stuff was for folks who doddered, plodded, and saved old pieces of string. Thankfully, a renaissance of poetry has been underway in this country for several years, and youth are in the middle of it. If you didn't know: poetry is cool again. Check the what's-happening sections of newspapers in major cities or the CD collection in the library. Poetry slams, performance poetry, and rap blur the bounds between speech/music/poetry as never before, revealing poetry's affinates with other art forms and its aptitude for ignoring barriersof education, gender, class, race age, nationality, geography, religion, and politics. Regardless of their roots, their styles, their aims. poets tell us that writing poetry is freeing. Stale confinements break way so the poet can push out of his chrysalis to breathe and discover who he is at that moment and apprehend something of the state of the world. Understanding the essential link betwenn poetry and its social context erases any alleged incompatibility between th "poetry of witness" (pejoratively dubbed "political" in some circles) and "apolitical" poetry. The best poetry ultimately springs from our most human complusions to tell the truth, be it "slant," as Dickinson found necessary, or more raw. Where injustice take hold, poetry stands as no less a vital witness than the one who speaks in court, for the poet witnesses the hard truths that are sometimes in the street, sometimes piled in ditches, and sometimes staring at us in the mirror. Whether rooted in injustice or something equally disturbing but far more intimate, those truths must be told, sung, pondered, danced, cried, and repeated. The poet's work is shaman's work- proffering bitter herbs and seeking guidance with the aim of healing. The poet is propelled by a desire for soul survival nearly as compelling as the desire for breath. Without risking the depths of emotional and imaginative experience, she loses her sense of vitality; her veins run cold. She takes in food, she takes in drink, she sleeps and moves and thinks, yet feels she isn't fully alive. Writers, particularly, perhaps, poets,are all about noticing and sustaining life. Spiritual Life. As William Faulkner said in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech of 1950, " The poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail." --Kathleen McCoy
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