Author/poet works to put r-e-s-p-e-c-t back into art

Nikki Giovanni isn't the first artist to adapt Aesop's The Ant and the Grasshopper.

James Joyce reworked the fable, The Muppet Show took a swing at it and, in 1934, a Walt Disney cartoon recast the story's emphasis on the value of hard work into a kinder tale of compassion.

Aesop told of ants that gather food all summer while a grasshopper spends his days idly in song. Come winter, the grasshopper starves, but the ants never hunger.

That lesson never sat well with Ms. Giovanni.

"I kind of got sick of that a long time ago," the 65-year-old poet and author said in a recent telephone interview. "The problem is, the grasshopper is an artist. The grasshopper set the cadence for the ants to get the work done."

The fable, she decided, would be just the fodder she needed for a children's book.

Her version, The Grasshopper's Song , was released in May.

The book bears the stamp of an activist known for her commitment to civil rights, social equality and preservation of the arts.

"I had the grasshopper sue the ant," Ms. Giovanni said. "It's the American way. He goes to the best law firm in the meadow. He gets r-e-s-p-e-c-t."

She will read from the book today at Paine College as part of the Westobou Festival.

"Where would we be without art? It's time the artist got some respect," she said.

After Sept. 11 and the 2007 shootings at Virginia Tech (where Ms. Giovanni is a professor), she has turned to writing for relief.

"I wrote four books in the year and a half coming out of the tragedy of April 16," said Ms. Giovanni, who had taught the Virginia Tech gunman, Seung-Hui Cho, in a creative writing class.

"I got a lot of work done because I didn't want to descend into sadness," she said. "You do the best you can and hope."

She learned that lesson in a six-week span in summer 2005, when her mother and her sister died of lung cancer, a disease Ms. Giovanni had been diagnosed with 10 years earlier.

Ms. Giovanni, who quit smoking and had surgery to remove part of her lungs, told The New York Times a year later, "I smoke in my dreams."

"It was a very difficult year. You can't just let yourself descend into sadness," she said. "You have to find a way to give something in the face of tragedy."

Ms. Giovanni has written more than 30 books and is the recipient of more than 25 honorary degrees.

Her spoken-word recordings earned a Grammy nomination in 2004.

Her days are spent in Blacksburg, Va., teaching and churning out new works such as the forthcoming Lincoln and Douglass , a book on the friendship of the 16th president and the former slave and abolitionist.

Another project, Hip Hop Speaks to Children , a book and audio release, is set for publication in October.

"I got sick of the way people were treating hip-hop. It's just misunderstood," Ms. Giovanni said. "I thought it was time somebody said, 'Wait about that now.'"

It's time, she said, somebody gave the artist some r-e-s-p-e-c-t.

Reach Kelly Jasper at (706) 823-3552 or kelly.jasper@augustachronicle.com.