"I can make music. I can give color to the world": Interview with E. Ethelbert Miiler

Abstract

As a political writer and literary activist, Ethelbert Miller believes in using his poetic gift to confront a worm torn by clashes over religion and class divisions. He sees the changing world through the prism of art and affirms that art is a force by which one can alter reality. In a characteristic pronouncement in his memoir, Fathering Words: The Making of an African American Writer, Miller tells us how a person, any person, creates a life and knows it's the right choice: One night a poem comes to me. Words. Revelations. In the beginning I was a small boy standing on a corner in the Bronx waiting for my father. The sky is gray. I start praying. Suddenly words are escorting me across the street. I reach the other side, proud of what I've done. I can write. My prayers are songs. I can make music. I can give color to the world. This is my life. This is my gift. Miller writes powerfully about grief and loss, family and love, against the backdrop of stark realities of contemporary life like racism and war. His poetry is a multicultural quilt of voices, a blending of humanity, a celebration of the triumph of the human spirit and the acknowledgement of all that is beautiful in the world. The founder and director of the Ascension Poetry Reading Series, Miller is the former chair of the Humanities Council of Washington DC. He is a core faculty member of the Bennington Writing Seminars at Bennington College. He has been the director of the African American Resource Center at Howard University since 1974. Author of poetry collections like Andromeda (1974), Where are the Love Poems for Dictators? (1986, reprinted in 2001), and Whispers, Secrets and Promises (1998), Miller has also edited many anthologies, including the highly-acclaimed In Search of Color Everywhere: A Collection of African American Poetry (1994) and Women Surviving Massacres and Men (1977). In 2001 the Mayor of Jackson, Tennessee, proclaimed May 21, 2001 as E. Ethelbert Miller Day. He has been honored by Laura Bush and the White House at the National Book Festival in 2001 and 2003. Miller preserves the arts by bringing current and sometimes historical poetry programming to the public, by mentoring emerging writers, and by making connections across racial and religious lines. He has hosted two radio shows in the past and currently hosts a television show, Humanities Profiled, sponsored by the Humanities Council of Washington DC. Miller is one of the editors of Poet Lore. He is an advisory editor for the African American Review, an advisory board member of Arts & Letters: Journal of Contemporary Culture, a contributing editor to Callaloo and Editorial Advisor for the Black Issues Book Review. In addition, he serves on the board of the Arts Commission for the City of Washington DC, as well as for the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive thinktank. Through these traditional academic and scholarly venues as well as public programs in schools, prisons, and libraries, he ensures that a plurality of voices is heard. As the following interview reveals, the multiple roles that Miller plays across boundaries and the multiple voices that he enables and empowers are keys to his vision of the American Dream. This interview took place at the interviewer's Seattle apartment February 23, 2004. Nibir K. Ghosh: Does the average African American citizen continue to be an invisible man even at the dawn of the 21st Century? Ethelbert Miller: No, Black people are more visible than ever before. The world is a place filled with color. One might claim that white people today are becoming invisible. With DNA research being available it might be possible to conclude that whiteness no longer exists. NKG: Sometimes while walking alongside a river or lake I feel a little Langston in me. Suddenly I have a desire to throw all my possessions into the water and listen to my heart. …