THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, March 27, 1996 TAG: 9603270021
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: By DENISE WATSON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 161 lines
BARBARA-MARIE GREEN isn't sure when the poetry became such a great part of her, now waking her many nights and causing her to grab the closest legal pad.
It might've been growing up in the cultural heaven of Harlem, back when theater great Ethel Waters was a neighbor and poet Langston Hughes used to stop by Green's YWCA to talk poetry. Maybe the mounds of books kept around the house were the influence. Or that day cousin Vivian pulled a 7-year-old Green to the couch and opened a book.
``It was Shelley's `To a Skylark,' '' the now 67-year-old Green remembers, hugging her arms as her cousin did that day.
`` `Hail to thee, blithe spirit! Bird though never wert. . . .' I didn't understand the first thing that she said,'' the Virginia Beach poet said in her cadenced tone. ``All I knew was that the language was beautiful. The sound, the language was beautiful.''
Perhaps the roots aren't as important as what has sprouted from them. The retired educator, publisher and journalist has just released her third book of poetry, ``Dreams and Memories.'' Two of her works are included in the recently published ``Rock Against the Wind,'' an anthology of African-American poets, including the work of Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, Rita Dove and Hughes.
But her poetry is more than her written stanzas. There's a beauty in the way she relates to people.
Several Booker T. Washington High School students have rallied around the poet and have begun a ``Green Dream'' drive, planning a letter-writing campaign and promotional video to get Green on the ``Oprah Winfrey Show.'' The students began the project three weeks ago after Green read some of her work at the school.
Green told them about her life, her work and an old friend who wished to see Green on the television program.
``She was a really enthusiastic person,'' said Torrie Cuffee, a senior.
``We went in thinking she was going to be boring, but she really inspired us with her poetry. . . . Some African-Americans born during the Harlem Renaissance were held back because of their race, but that didn't stop her from pursuing her dreams.''
``We do have speakers here, frequently, but for the students to take an action on the speaker's behalf is unusual,'' said Judith Jackson, a social studies teacher at Booker T. Washington.
``The comment I heard most often was that she is inspirational. And I heard it from English teachers who aren't often speechless. . . . She is a wonderful woman.''
It isn't new for Green to be in schools or to engage folks through poetry. She began teaching in 1952, taking a difficult job in a Bronx elementary school.
``I was the 13th teacher of that class, in that school year,'' Green said. ``I learned right away that I couldn't write on the blackboard. As soon as I turned my back, rulers, books, papers would fly.''
She developed rigidly structured lesson plans that focused the fourth-graders, demanded the school fix the room's mostly broken equipment and brought in plants and curtains for the lifeless room. The poetry began.
``I taught my students Langston Hughes' poem ``Hold Fast to Dreams,'' Green said.
`` `Hold fast to dreams, for when dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly. Hold fast to dreams, for when dreams go, life is a barren field frozen with snow. . . .' I would begin by saying the goal for this year is to hold fast to our dreams.
``It set the tone for successes throughout the year.''
By her second year, Green's class became the room where problem kids were sent. By her third, Green's students were writing their social studies homework in poetry, and their work was published in national education publications.
In 1966, she was honored by a New York guild of women as ``Inspirer for the Youth of the Nation.''
Green is often asked now who or what has been her source of inspiration. Friends, God. Green has many.
But the greatest seems to be her mother, Mae McCarter Green, who died more than 20 years ago.
``Mother was strong, more than strong. I would say she was powerful,'' Green said.
Mae McCarter Green was a New York suffragist who organized rallies for black women who weren't allowed to march with whites for the right to vote. She was outspoken at school board and city government meetings and active in the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs.
And she was always there for Green.
``She let me know, through her words and through her actions, that there wasn't anything I couldn't do,'' Green said. ``The way might be difficult, but I was Mae McCarter Green's daughter and I could do anything!''
Green moved through New York's educational system as teacher, guidance counselor and assistant principal before retiring in 1982.
But she couldn't retire from writing. A year later, she became a community news reporter for The New York Voice, a weekly black publication.
Green developed a following, and readers encouraged her to start her own publication. By 1985, she had produced her first issue of The Good News, a title taken from Sophocles: ``None love the messenger who brings bad news.''
She wanted a cultural monthly magazine to give readers a positive glance into life in Queens.
``I wanted it to be a local publication,'' Green said, ``but it never was.''
She used her Christmas card list and shipped first copies to friends across the country. They soon called, wanting more.
Some of those friends volunteered to write health columns and theater reviews, and soon Green had a national publication with a circulation of more than 3,000. She also had an outlet for her poetic voice, which was beginning to form. Some of her work appeared in Essence magazine also.
In April 1986, the New York State Legislature passed a resolution to commemorate the anniversary of the founding of The Good News, calling it ``a living estuary to Black culture and happening.''
Copies have been bound for the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem.
But Green began to feel restless in New York.
``It was changing so rapidly. It wasn't the safe, loving place I knew,'' Green said. ``It was no longer my New York.''
She moved to Virginia Beach in 1988 and changed the name of her magazine to the The Creative Record, but those late-night writings had begun. In 1992, Green published her last magazine.
``A very good friend of mine told me if I was very tired of the newspaper to do something else,'' Green said. ``I did. `Love, Pain, Hope' that was something else.''
``Love, Pain, Hope'' was her first book of poetry, published in 1990. It was followed by ``More Poetic Thoughts'' in 1993.
Her poetry speaks of the joy of sleep, the friendship of women, love between senior citizens, sex.
``A lot of what I write about is not true of my life, and might not be true of others,'' Green said. ``But I feel it. . . . Poems are like people. They have their own characters, their own time when they will be born. I'm only the instrument.''
Her work caught the eye of Lindsay Patterson, the New York editor of ``A Rock Against the Wind.'' This book is a second edition to a ``Rock Against the Wind'' anthology he published in 1973.
``One of her poems had been published in Essence magazine, and I fell in love with it years ago,'' Patterson said.
``I contacted her and she sent me more of her work. I thought it fit in with this book. . . . Where the original book was about individual love, it was harsher. These are more introspective, softer.''
Green's life is her poetry now. She returned to New York recently for a reading with several other ``Rock Against the Wind'' poets and has been nominated to the Seneca Falls National Women's Hall of Fame in the areas of journalism and literature.
Green has been honored time and again for her work - being included in ``Who's Who Among Black Americans,'' the ``African American Biographies Hall of Fame'' and ``Who's Who Among American Women'' - but the most prized honors come from going to places like Booker T., where people crowd around, eyes open, mouth shut and listen to the words that have become such a part of her.
``When I spoke (at the school), the bell rang and none of the students moved,'' Green said. ``That's the greatest compliment they could've given me. That's what my work is about.'' MEMO: Green's books can be bought by writing to P.O. Box 64412, Virginia
Beach, Va. 23467-4412.
ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
BILL TIERNAN/The Virginian-Pilot
Virginia Beach poet Barbara-Marie Green has had a poem selected for
publication in an anthology of black poets, ``A Rock Against the
Wind,'' below.
KEYWORDS: PROFILE BIOGRAPHY POETRY by CNB