Reblogged from JoeAnn Hart’s Float ~
JoeAnn Hart writes:
“Last week at the AWP conference in Seattle, I participated in a panel called The Greening of Literature: Eco-Fiction and Poetry to Enlighten and Inspire. The discussion was led by John Yunker of Ashland Creek, an environmentally conscious press in Oregon, (and publisher of Float). I was joined by poet Gretchen Primack, and fiction writers Ann Pancake and Mindy Mejia. We had such a scintillating program, I am moved to share my short talk here, starting with a quote from Ian McEwan’s 2010 novel, Solar:
“Professor Beard would not have believed it possible that he would be in a room drinking with so many seized by the same particular assumption, that it was art in its highest forms – poetry, sculpture, dance, abstract music, conceptual art – that would lift climate change as a subject, gild it, palpate it, reveal all the horror and lost beauty and awesome threat and inspire the public to take thought, take action, or demand it of others.”
Professor Beard, with his Nobel prize in physics clutched to his chest, is offended by the idea that art might be a better tool for curing a sick planet than his analytical facts. But for all his scientific knowledge, he fails to understand that art has power. Images created by art by-pass the modern cerebral cortex and go straight to our ancient limbic brain which controls memory and emotion, the part of the brain where we process value judgments, judgments that exert a strong influence on our behavior.”
Good Morning Gloucester 