YSU POETRY CENTER Cultivating an appreciation for the arts

A goal is to create a joint master of fine arts program with other schools.
By JoANNE VIVIANO
VINDICATOR EDUCATION WRITER
LIBERTY -- It's a Wednesday night and wine is flowing at the Greenway house and so is conversation.
One discussion centers around Eugene Ionesco's "Rhinoceros"; others discuss the differences in writing poetry in "hot" or "cold" blood. But the atmosphere is far from bookish. Jokes are swapped and guitars appear as the group is drawn into music.
The event is an extension of the Youngstown State University Poetry Center -- not a physical "center" but, rather, a group of English professors who bring poets and other authors to campus. After many readings on campus, listeners gather at receptions, often at the Liberty Township home of Drs. Betty and William Greenway.
"We want Youngstown and the English Department and the poetry department to attract a critical mass of literary activity," said Dr. Philip Brady, the center's director. "It's an opportunity to study and listen to ... highly renowned and accomplished people as well as people from the Mahoning Valley. There are a lot of talented local and regional writers."
Poetry born of suffering
Brady, a native of New York City, came to YSU in 1990. Ever since, he said, he's seen "an enormous amount of latent talent in this area, and the reason for that is there has been a lot of suffering."
Although suffering can silence people and crush them, those who express it show a fuller sense of being human, Brady said.
"There were people who had the need to feel the Zeitgeist, -- the feeling of this area ... the spirit of the place," Brady explained. "There's something different about this place from the rest of America. It can be bitter ... but, if tapped in the right place, it can be very wise."
Dozens of poets and authors have read in the Poetry Center's reading series since it was established in 1994. Among them are Pulitzer Prize-winners such as Robert Olen Butler and W.D. Snodgrass and other award-winning writers, including Sharon Olds, William Heyen and Nigerian-born Tanure Ojaide.
On average, readings draw 100 people. Most are attending such an event for the first time and respond positively, learning that poetry is not "elitist, arcane or iconoclastic," Brady said.
Rescued by grants
As state cuts strangled the YSU budget, the center's budget was slashed in half this year, to about $3,000, Brady said. A $3,200 private grant from poet Nin Andrews and her husband, Jim Andrews, a YSU physics professor, saved the year's reading series. An additional $700 grant from the Ohio Arts Council paid for a fall visit from poet Bruce Bond.
Despite the funding strains, Brady is hopeful that the success of the Poetry Center, and other literary endeavors at YSU, will help create an impetus for a new master of fine arts degree program.
Although plans have not been ironed out, the program would be a collaboration, pulling together faculty at YSU, Kent State University, Cleveland State University and the University of Akron. Students would use resources and take classes through various schools.
Brady, Greenway and Dr. Steven Reese provide the nucleus of the Poetry Center. The three also form three-fourths of the "Brady's Leap" band that just released a CD. (The fourth member is Kelly Bancroft, coordinator of YSU's Students Motivated by the Arts program.)
Brady also co-directs Etruscan Press, a national nonprofit literary publishing house formed in 2001. The group has published "September 11, 2001: American Writers Respond", edited by Heyen, and other books including, most recently, "Crow Man," a collection of stories by Tom Bailey.
And he edits poetry for The Artful Dodge, a literary journal.
Creating dialogue
Brady said the four enterprises -- the Poetry Center, the publishing house, the literary journal and the musical group -- are all part of creating a dialogue on campus. Students are involved in many of the activities, he said. For example, one student recently put together a tribute that collects the biographies of each writer who has read for the Poetry Center; others help out with Artful Dodger tasks.
"We're creating an interface between the literary world that's out there and this place; a presence for the national literary world here," Brady said.