The Literary Corner: Margaret Danner’s Life and Works (side b)

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Brooks B. Robinson: The Literary Corner by writers of the world. A series of analyses and interpretations of black world literature. Today our guest is black American poet Margaret Essie Danner. [[percussive music]]
Margaret Danner:

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Poetry isn't white. Poetry isn't black. Poetry is individual and it attains the creative height that makes it belong to mankind. There was a war, must have been World War Two

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and they marched to Claude McKay's poem 'If we must die let it not be like hogs", Winston Churchill I think it was said this, it came out over the loudspeakers, to egg his men on to win, this World War Two "If you must die, let it not be like hogs", you know Claude McKay? Or have read him? You see, so that poem wasn't white it wasn't black it was truth. It was individual expression.

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Brooks B. Robinson: Margaret Essie Danner, black American poet and writer. Educated at Roosevelt College, Loyola University and Northwestern University, Margaret Danner is a former poet in residence at Wayne State University, Detroit, and LeMoyne-Owen College Memphis, Tennessee.

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She is founder and director of Boone House Cultural Center in Detroit and former Assistant Editor of Poetry Magazine. She has received many awards for her poetry including the John Hay Whitney Fellowship. Miss Danner's writings are widely anthologized, however. She has often been described as 'communicating poet'. Now to an inter...

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Brooks B. Robinson: --of Afro-American Studies, Professor Sarah Fabio.

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Brooks B. Robinson: At the time of our interview, Mrs. Danner was experiencing visual difficulties. Professor Fabio reads her works.

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Brooks B. Robinson: I'm your host, Brooks Robinson.

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Brooks B. Robinson: Professor Fabio, you might start by introducing our audience to Mrs. Danner through some of her works and asking her some of the major questions you have in mind.

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Sarah Fabio: Alright, I know that 1966 was probably a big year for you Margaret and that is the year that I met you.

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We were both in Africa for The First World Festival of Negro Arts at Dakar, Senegal and I heard Margaret there reading some of her poetry with its African imagery and African themes

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and I can say that she was very much appreciated by the international audience. What kinds of things did 1966 bring to you, Margaret?

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Margaret Danner: 1966 was a kind of rebirth in that in Africa I found so many of my friends on their native soil.

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I walked down one street and there would be Langston Hughes, and there was Sinclair Drake,

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and there was Sarah Fabio and many, many others and we were all at home in Africa,

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and I feel that it regenerated the spark in us and that we have come a much faster, higher pace because of the Senegal, um

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Sarah Fabio: Right, right[[affirmative]]. I know that you, of your involvement with 'Boone House' in Detroit not only had you worked as a poet for many years in Chicago, but I know that you worked in Detroit and also as far away as the LeMoyne College environment, in Memphis.

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Maybe you wanna tell us about the kind of dues paying the poet has to pay, outside of just writing? [[crosstalk]]

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Margaret Danner: Mm,hmm [[affirmative]] Well, it is a paying of dues, except that to me,

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Margaret Danner: me, it was alive. It was something that I wanted to do, and I think that I lived longer because I was doing it. I certainly did experience a much more sensitive way of life than I would have would I have, had I not been writing.

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Margaret Danner: The writing has thrown me into contact with people who were so highly sensitive in every city, Detroit is just full of beautiful people.

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Margaret Danner: Dudley Randall was there and we did 'Poem Counterpoem', and he started his publishing press. And uh Naomi Madgett Long is a Detroiter,

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Margaret Danner: And, oh I could just name many, many and I had a little cultural center called Boone House that was sort of, loaned to me by

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a Dr. Boone who owns so much property and so many homes. And this was his, kind of, Parish House which he did not need. And so the writers would all come, Bob Hayden came, and we would get together there,

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Margaret Danner: and write and talk and freeze to death because I tried to live there.
Sarah Fabio: [[laughs]]

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Margaret Danner: And the beautiful thing about it, the neighbor, the children, they would come by and drop quarters and their parents would put a dollar or two in the mail box and all, because they wanted a cultural center there. And the atmosphere there for building a culture is very beautiful.

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Sarah Fabio: Yes, Detroit is probably one of the most supportive cultural places
Margaret Danner: Mm, hmm, mm, hmm [[affirmative]]
Sarah Fabio: that we have. Uh,

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Sarah Fabio: Not only Motown, and of course Motown has had a big thing there.
Unknown: That's right.
Sarah Fabio: Aretha Franklin's father's church is there,
Margaret Danner: Mm, hmm. Mm, hmm. Mm, hmm. [[affirmative]]
Sarah Fabio: and you have people like that.

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Sarah Fabio: And then, just straight-up literary figures,
Margaret Danner: Yeah. [[affirmative]]
Sarah Fabio: as you said, Broadside, of which Margaret's first book 'Poem Counterpoem' was published with.
Margaret Danner: Mm, hmm. [[affirmative]]
Sarah Fabio: And it was the first book published by this new publishing house.

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Margaret Danner: Yeah. [[affirmative]]
Sarah Fabio: And of course, Margaret has come a long way since the publication of this small, about 20 page, volume, that she shared with Dudley. 'Til today when she's just published 'The Down of A Thistle', which is a large, fully illustrated, a hundred and ...

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Margaret Danner: Yes, but not really as large in my heart as my first little publication

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we worked so strenuously at it, and Dudley is such a taskmaster, and I am so flighted, and it was really quite an experience

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and the whole Detroit was interested. It was their book too and bell island, green man, and Detroit,

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and all of these took part in making it of a very sensitive sessions of my life.

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Sarah Fabio: I think Dudley described this business of two poets publishing points on the same thing

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like similar to a boxing match where you try to out do each other thematically, right.

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Margaret Danner: Oh yes, and we were very the thing that was so

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exciting to me about Dudley Randell is that he is an honest critic.

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He said "I don't like that now do I don't like yours and mines better" and that type of thing,

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and that way we were able, I think, to hone our work to the extent that it was lifted a little.

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Sarah Fabio: It's interesting, Dudley was a librarian, and of course Arna Bontemps was also a librarian,

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and these people who can anthologize and can help get a large amount of the work of black people published seems as if the librarian is high on the list.

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Margaret Danner: Yes it might be good for poets to find librarian friends.

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Sarah Fabio: Right? They certainly read more than general public.

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Brooks B. Robinson: Let me ask a question here, Mrs. Danner, and that is what specifically do you trying to do most in your work.

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Some oranges have their own particular veins that they're drawn to travel in. What's your vein, what are you trying to say?

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Margaret Danner: What I try to do is contain myself to the writing of good poetry,

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because if I didn't do that, I would just write and write and write and fall in love-

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about him and I had to write about Sarah, and I would write about you- you see- I have to- you see my problem is to contain and to restrain

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and to- and I just love some of my cliches, you know I just don't want to throw them away.

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Sarah Fabio: Margaret if you don't mind, may I take the liberty to read a couple of your poems?
Margaret Danner:

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Please do
Sarah Fabio: Alright, this one is called "This is an African Worm"

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This is an African worm, but then a worm in any land is still a worm

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It will not stride, run, stand up before the flutter bys?
Margaret Danner:

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Yes
Sarah Fabio: Okay
Margaret Danner:

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Yes, flutter by, yes
Sarah Fabio: Right
Margaret Danner: Uh huh
Sarah Fabio:

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Butterflies who have passed their worm-like state
Margaret Danner:

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[laughs]
Sarah Fabio:

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It must keep low, not lift its head.

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I've had the dread experience, I know.

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A worm can do nothing but crawl. Crawl and wait.
Margaret Danner:

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Thank you very much.
Sarah Fabio:

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Yesterday we had the experience of having a mural uh- painted on a wall and a dedication to the mural. And one of your poems, just as our African ancestors did is in honor of one of the early mural walls in Chicago, the OBAC wall in the ghetto. 1967.

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None have gained a loftier recognition the medium of the arts from 400 B.C. than we chrome-tones, we blacks.

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And here in Chicago, about 5 blocks from where I was born where, again, creating portraits of other blacks we respect on a wall of a building that should long ago have experienced rejection.

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Finally, blacks are being reawakened to reclaim another spark in our incomparable heritage.

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We enfold again and hold and enhance and paint with all the colours of the rain-

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Sarah Fabio: To testify to our pride of stance, and attest our love on this old brick wall,

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just as our forefathers so superbly did,

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through carving and molding on stone, on wood, on iron, bronze, ivory, and gold.
Margaret Danner: Well thank you!

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Brooks B. Robinson: Just as our African ancestors did.

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Mrs. Danner, as a writer, as a black writer in the world, what made you do what you did?

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Uh, made you write the poetry that you've written, and the other works that you've - instructed and developed?

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Margaret Danner: Well - uh, that's difficult to answer. I began writing - I had an uncle who wrote and I had a cousin who's book was published many years ago, he wrote -

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and these men that are in the background of my life, I wanted to do what they did and I think that's what started me writing as a youngster.

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I was chosen a, a poet - class poet - because a poem that I wrote saying that I wanted to be a violin, uh, was, received first prize - the first prize. The teacher said she loved the poem, so she gave me a violin.

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I didn't say that I wanted to own a violin and there was awful screeching around. I said I wanted to be one I wanted life to pluck my strings - which life did - and so that I think I began because there was this atmosphere there in the home.

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Brooks B. Robinson: And from there you went on to write numerous works--
Margaret Danner: Oh I began to write about boys--

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my goodness, you see, when in my teens - those marvelous boys - and I would write about them with all kinds of very strange imagery that was very bad. I couldn't - one had ebony eyes and you know, uh, yes.

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Brooks B. Robinson: Yes. But it all turned out beautifully. Would you like to make anymore comments?

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Margaret Danner: Thank you, you could tell that I'm just tickled to be here.

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{music starts playing}

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Brooks B. Robinson: You've been listening to the Literary Corner, Black Writers of the World.

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A series of analyses and interpretations of black world literature.

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Today, you heard black American poet, Margeret Essy Danner.

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Our operator has been Bob Chan,

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I'm your producer, Brooks Robinson.

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The literary corner was made possible by funds from WHA Radio (Madison, Wisconsin).

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A service of the University of Wisconsin Extension.

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