Poetry Friday: 5 Questions for Debbie Levy

Greetings, Poets!

Last Friday, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act with Debbie Levy's new picture book, WE SHALL OVERCOME: THE STORY OF THE SONG. [Read the post here.]

Find it at IndieBound

As promised, Debbie is here in person to tell us more about the book, which explores the history of this Civil Rights anthem in free verse. But first...

This week's Poetry Friday blogroll is brought to you
by my friend and fellow Marylander
Tabatha Yeatts-Lonske
at The Opposite of Indifference.

I'm thrilled that you're here today, Debbie! I am so curious about the genesis of both the song and the book WE SHALL OVERCOME that it was hard for me to stick to five questions, so let's dive in.

What was the genesis for the idea that became WE SHALL OVERCOME? I’d like to know more about the concept that songs have back-stories. Why did you choose this particular song’s story to tell?

I began gathering string on the life of this song years ago. “We Shall Overcome” and issues related to “We Shall Overcome” kept popping up during research on other books for young readers that I wrote—a book about bigotry, a biography of Lyndon Johnson, and a book about the lives of enslaved people on southern plantations. So I began filing my discoveries away.

Find it at Amazon.

Find it at IndieBound.

What went into the file, especially early on, wasn’t specifically or only about the song “We Shall Overcome.” In working on my children’s book about plantation slave life, for example, I was captivated by first-person narratives of formerly enslaved people describing their music. And I was struck by this observation by Frederick Douglass, from his autobiography:

I have often been utterly astonished . . . to find persons who could speak of the singing, among slaves, as evidence of their contentment and happiness. It is impossible to conceive of a greater mistake. Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by tears.

The precise words and tune of “We Shall Overcome” don’t date back to slavery days, but for me there is an undeniable connection between this song, which has so frequently been sung to embolden those fighting for justice and to comfort those who have suffered, and the songs of which Frederick Douglass spoke. I found, and the book chronicles, a history of voices upon voices singing songs that evolved into “We Shall Overcome,” with people making changes in the lyrics and melodies to suit their circumstances. I wanted to create a book that could reach even the youngest readers, and put them in touch with the history of an activity they all know something about: singing.

What role does music play in your own life? Do you listen to music when you’re writing?

I don’t listen to music when I’m writing. (Do you?) I like quietness.

[AA: I’m with you, Debbie. I love listening music, but find it too distracting when I’m writing.]

But music has played a large role in my life. I’ve played piano since I was a little girl. I don’t play well—I play worse now than I did as I child—and my sight reading of music is abysmal. But having a piano in my life feels necessary. In this I know I am influenced by my grandmother, Rose Salzberg, who was a piano teacher when she was a young woman in Poland and Germany and whose playing in our home and in her own home was a constant soundtrack in the life of our family here in Maryland. Certain Chopin pieces, which were her favorites, bring me to tears.

Rose's Sheet Music
(Courtesy of Debbie Levy)

If musical talent skipped a generation in my case, it did land squarely on my sons’ shoulders. My eldest is a jazz musician working in New York and abroad. My youngest is a talented singer, although it’s not something he chose to make a career of. It’s awfully sweet when they visit and the house is full of live music again.

What was involved in tracing “We Shall Overcome” back to its beginnings in slavery, but also in tracing its progress in more recent history as the song spread around the world?

My research for this 32-page picture book was as far-ranging as any research I’ve done, and I’ve done a lot of research as a lawyer, editor, and writer. The sources range from songbooks to academic studies; from decades of newspaper articles (here’s a favorite headline from a 1967 New York Times article: “Popularity of U.S. Rights Hymn Irks German Reds”) to liner notes from LP records; from books about the civil rights movement to articles about African American song traditions to interview transcripts.

Remember the file I mentioned earlier, in which I started collecting the bits that helped me conceive of and write this book? Another signature item that went into the file was the text of Lyndon Baines Johnson’s speech in March 1965 urging passage of the Voting Rights Act after Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama, in which he echoed the words of the song:

What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and State of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life. Their cause must be our cause too. Because it is not just Negroes, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome.

Then when I found video of that speech and actually heard his distinctive twang saying these words—very moving to me. (Here’s the text and the video: http://millercenter.org/president/speeches/detail/3386.)

One more tidbit: before I started my research, I had no idea that “We Shall Overcome” has been sung by schoolchildren in India for years. I believe that you are more likely to find kids in a school in Mumbai who know this song, and who have sung it at school assemblies, than if you go into a school in this country.

I loved your book THE YEAR OF GOODBYES, which looks at early Nazi Germany through the eyes of your own Jewish family. Threads of that book’s focus on history and human rights appear again in WE SHALL OVERCOME. Do you have a personal connection to the song?

Thank you for loving THE YEAR OF GOODBYES, Laura, which has a special place in my heart since it’s about my mother. As for a personal connection to the song “We Shall Overcome”—I have the same connection any other human has to a song with such rich history, significance, and power. Maybe my response is sharpened by my roots in a family that experienced persecution during the Nazi era. But you know, a picture book is collaboration. 

The illustrator of WE SHALL OVERCOME, Vanessa Brantley-Newton (http://oohlaladesignstudio.blogspot.com/), has distinct and personal memories of being subject to the injustices of segregation during her 1960s childhood, the types of injustices that gave rise to the use of the song as a civil rights anthem. Working on this book was a deeply personal experience for her. And the editor who first acquired the manuscript of this book—her roots are in India, and the song’s story resonated for her in part because of the connection she felt personally to the tradition of singing “We Shall Overcome” in that country’s schools.

What are some ways that classroom educators might use your book to introduce a unit on the American Civil Rights movement?

I’d suggest that educators begin with a kid-appropriate discussion of the type of injustices that underlay the rise of “We Shall Overcome.” In my own interactions with young students around this book, I have been finding that they don’t necessarily grasp the notion of racial bigotry at first. (I don’t view this as a bad thing!) But we do need to introduce them to this part of our history, which, as we adults know, isn’t really a thing of the past.

So I like to begin by talking about unfairness, with some “what if?” questions. What if . . . you couldn’t go to your favorite park because of hair color? Had to sit apart in school or on bus or in movies because you go to a different church—or don’t go to church? Couldn’t go to the place where they serve the best ice cream in town because only blue people can and you are orange?

They giggle, but they get it. And then I talk about how, not so long ago, restaurants could refuse to serve you a meal if you were African American. I explain that, in those days, if you were African American, if you were Mexican American—you could not drink out of the same water fountains as white people in some parts of the country. I share photographs of these and other segregationist practices. They are pretty striking.

And I ask: if you were being treated so unfairly, or if someone you loved were, how would you feel? We can agree that being treating this unfairly could make you so angry and frustrated that you might want to fight. But fighting with your fists could create even more problems for you and it probably wouldn’t get you what you wanted.

We discuss other ways to fight—not with your fists but with your brain. You could join with others who are treated unfairly. You could tell everyone out in the world about what was happening. You could march in protest. You could quietly, but firmly, demand your rights.

Miami University Freedom Summer
(Courtesy of Debbie Levy)

I explain, again showing photos, that this is exactly what African Americans, and others who wanted to help fight the unfairness, did. They fought with their brains. And I explain that there was another important way that people fought with their brains. Yes, they marched, they sat in at lunch counters, they protested. But they did something else.

Anti-segregation March
(Courtesy of Debbie Levy)

THEY SANG! We talk about how singing shows the people who are treating you unfairly that you are strong, that you are a human being, and that you will be heard. And if inside you are feeling a little scared or sad, singing can give you courage and can lift your spirits—especially if you’re singing with others.

I’d also encourage educators to read the book aloud and, where the lyrics are excerpted, sing them. I’d encourage them to go to the online sources listed in the back of the book and on my website to hear the song being sung by different people, and in at least one different language.

Once the students have read the book and had discussions like the ones I’ve described, I love to ask them to come up with new verses that would apply to their lives today, in their schools or neighborhoods—and we sing them together.

Thanks for your questions, Laura!

Thank you so much for answering them, Debbie. I think you captured the heart of WE SHALL OVERCOME with these words: “Singing shows the people who are treating you unfairly that you are strong, that you are a human being, and that you will be heard."

Debbie Levy is the author of the picture books We Shall Overcome: The Story of a Song (2013); Dozer’s Run: A True Story of a Dog and His Race (2014); the young adult novel Imperfect Spiral (2013); The Year of Goodbyes: A True Story of Friendship, Family, and Farewells (2010); and other books of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry for young people of all ages. The Year of Goodbyes was a Kirkus Best Book of 2010, a Parents’ Choice Award recipient, a VOYA Nonfiction Honor Book, and a Sydney Taylor Award Notable Book, among other honors.  We Shall Overcome has been named a 2014 Jane Addams Book Award Honor Book, a Bank Street College Best Book, and a 2014 Notable Social Studies Trade Book.  www.debbielevybooks.com

Elisabeth Dahl, Subplot Slasher (Kill Your Darlings 5) and a Giveaway

Happy Halloween, Writerly Friends!

Halloween is my favorite. I can't even refer to it as a "holiday" or "day" because it's just too epic. Dressing up! Candy! Running around the neighborhood in the dark, going from one friendly neighbor's door to another. Everything about Halloween is awesome.

Of course, there is the dark side to Halloween: ghosts (see yesterday's post for a true ghost story), a certain episode of Little House on the Prairie that still gives me nightmares, freaky slasher movies like Friday the 13th and The Shining.

There IS one time when it is acceptable to be a slasher.

If you are an author in the process of revising a novel, slash away. The pen IS your sword. Cut those red shirts to bits. Hack off that story-line. No knife or razor-sharp fingernail necessary. All you need is a pencil and your delete key.

I'm really excited to be sharing Halloween with Slasher Elisabeth Dahl. Elisabeth's middle grade novel GENIE WISHES came out earlier this year. She's guest blogging today, our first guest blogger of the KILL YOUR DARLINGS series!

Leave a comment on this post for a chance to win your own signed copy of GENIE WISHES. The contest will stay open until Sunday, 9 PM Eastern. (Contest for U.S. readers only.)

You can find Elisabeth Dahl at her website.

Elisabeth's going to tell us about cutting a full story-line from her novel in order to take it from draft to finished product.

The Final Form

In 2009, I wrote my first book-length manuscript. Called Genie Wishes: Girl Blogger, it followed a fifth-grade girl named Genie Haddock Kunkle through the second half of her fifth-grade year, beginning with her January election as class blogger.

On one hand, this was a school story, full of history lessons, cafeteria exchanges, and cringe-worthy “health” classes. But the manuscript also dealt with a family crisis. In the second half of the book, Genie’s father received word that Genie’s bipolar mother, who’d left the family several years earlier and moved to California, was off her meds and in trouble. Genie’s father flew west to help locate her and get her stabilized again.

That was the original story, at least. By the time the book was published, in April 2013, Genie Wishes had gained 16,000 words and about 20 line drawings. It had expanded to cover Genie’s whole fifth-grade year. But it had lost both a subtitle (Girl Blogger) and a subplot: the family crisis.

The editorial team at Abrams—and my eventual editor in particular—expressed some interest in the book but believed that the family crisis storyline wasn’t working. They felt that the strengths of the story lay elsewhere. Having worked as an editor myself, I knew that sometimes authors didn’t see a manuscript’s ideal final form as well as an editor could. Editing your own manuscript was like cutting your own hair: You could do it, but the results might be lopsided. But a good editor could guide you through the necessary edits, leaving behind a more perfect final form.

So I was willing to at least try it the editor’s way. But I was worried. I’d always thought of the novel as seriocomic, with the mother crisis responsible for much of the serio- aspect. I worried that removing the mother storyline might reduce the book to a frothy confection.

But in fact, once the mother storyline came out (in the final version, the mother has died many years earlier), attention could shift to the other, more subtly serious issues that the book raises. The question of what you do when a friend decides to dump you. The question of how you deal with teasing. The issue of growing up at a pace that feels right for you. These topics had been more important to me than the mother storyline all along.

I still think of the mother sometimes. I remember the line drawing of her eventual reunion with Genie once she was back on her meds and stabilized. Their smiles were big and lovely. They might have been right for a different book. But they didn’t belong in this one.

Elisabeth Dahl writes for adults and children from her home in Baltimore. Genie Wishes (Amulet Books/ABRAMS, April 2013) is her first book. Her writing for adults has appeared at NPR.org, TheRumpus.net, Little Patuxent Review, and elsewhere. On Twitter, she’s @ElisabethDahl, and on the Web, www.elisabethdahl.com. She’s also on Facebook.

Remember to leave a comment for a chance at an extra treat.

Happy haunting, from me and Tom B!

Run for your TARDIS!
I'm going as (classic) Dr. Who #4, Tom Baker...

but I'm doing it girl-style.

30 Habits of Highly Effective Poets #5: Liz Moser on Anchoring

There's a strange thing that happens sometimes, when I have an idea for a poem. I jot down a quick note -- only enough to record the idea -- and I wait.

Several months ago I heard a segment on NPR about the anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. One of the nearby residents was interviewed and talked about the accident. Leaves in the area turned silver from the chemical fall-out. That image has stayed with me. But I have a sense that I'm not ready to write about it yet. The image is there, but it's floating, ungraspable. What metaphor can I build around those silver leaves, to take them from image to poem?

A tree surviving near Chernobyl -- www.earth-photography.com

I call this process "anchoring." What makes this image resonate for me? What do I want to say about it? Answering these questions is important. It's how I build the chain from fleeting idea to poem.

Maryland poet Liz Moser is visiting today. Her poem beautifully describes the process of anchoring.

Today I Nearly Drowned

by Liz Moser

Today I nearly drowned.
I was awash in
phrases, half-told stories, torn half-pages,
half-thoughts scribbled onto memo pads and envelopes.
Organize, to organize, I told myself as contents spilled
upon my chair, my rug, upon my laptop
lazing in unwritten words
that float on oceans of my mind.
One day, perhaps, my thoughts will be as ordered as the tide:
they’ll flow across a printed page in measured waves.
They will not sink into the sand of memory,
or dissipate in frothy chaos at my feet --
waves that splash across the beaches into streams.
My dreams will drift in ponds where booted men can cast their nets,
catch my reflections as they shimmer in the sun.
But not just yet, no, not until the flood
of vaporous ideas has settled in the mud
of days already lived but not yet understood.

Posted with permission.

Liz Moser writes poetry, fiction, essays, book reviews and memoirs. Her chapbook, Spirit Pond and Other Maine Poems focuses on mid-coast Maine. Other published works reflect her Maryland upbringing and residence. She received a 2003 F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Conference fiction award and The Potomac Review’s 2002 Poetry Prize.

Tomorrow, we celebrate the first Poetry Friday of National Poetry Month with Diane Mayr of Random Noodling. 

Obsessions

I would probably never write a thing if I didn't pay attention to my obsessions.

I'm not talking about chocolate, much as I crave it.

He drives me wild.

This is a different type of obsession -- when something catches your eye or ear and you immediately feel, "I want to learn everything I can about that."

Normal people don't let these "catch your ear" moments develop into full obsessions, but doing so is key to how I function as a writer.

Writers have obsessions, and that's a good thing. The more involved we become with an idea, concept, or tidbit from history, the more deeply we can express these things in a poem, play, story, or essay. I know it's a true obsession when I am researching or writing and I go into hyper focus. My kids know not to interrupt me then. It's almost a physical pain to be called out of what I'm working on to help find a missing shoe.

My current obsessions are:

• The Roc-A-Jets, 1950s all-girl rockabilly band based in Baltimore
• This painting, by Vincent van Gogh:

All it took was one look at that ocean of a beard, and I thought, "That painting might be a good subject for a poem." It only took thirty minutes of clicking around the Internet to find out that van Gogh had an uncharacteristically close relationship with his subject, postmaster Joseph Roulin, and Roulin's family.

What happens when obsessions collide? I don't have mental space for them both.

I'm writing down as much as I can about Roulin now, when the idea has energy. As long as I capture the initial impulse, I can come back to Roulin and van Gogh later.

Then, it's back to work on my piece about the Roc-A-Jets. Roulin looks like he would have enjoyed a good rockabilly show.

Stay tuned.

One of my favorite examples of a writer clearly obsessed with a subject appears in the novel The English Patient, by Michael Ondaatje (here is one blogger's review). Chapter 7 covers Kip's bomb squad training in the kind of attentive detail that can only come from deep research.

Come out to Ahh, Coffee! in Annapolis this Saturday evening and to hear the end result of one of my obsessions. I'll be featured at a reading, along with  my friend Fernando Quijano III. This will be my first public reading of a long ekphrastic poem. It's based on a work of fringe art -- the title of which I can't repeat here. Seriously.