Thanks for the tip; I'll check it out. Even though (or maybe because) I'm anti-war, I would normally never give something like this a second look. I agree with John Reed and Katha Pollitt, among others, that politics and poetry don't mix; the very phrase "peace poets" makes me cringe. Which is also, by the way, why conservatives are right to argue against poet laureates of New Jersey and direct governmemt subsidy of writers. They're prescriptions for pabulum, and worse.

Thanks for bringing this anthology to my attention, and for all your comments.

Poetry has been trying to find a more mass market lately. Current events poetry might be another stab in that direction. Why not, after all? But I imagine that losing oneself in the poetic moment is made the more challenging by tying the moment to a very loaded political moment.

The power of war
is powerless to all
In the end who has this power?
Define your power
and why would you want it?
Love is all that can conquer
Innocence is a kind of peace
This is where I want to be
with love, with innocence, with peace.

I hope you find it and keep it - unfortunately SOMEONE has to deal with those who would take peace away from others unjustly. They won't go away of their own accord.

My response: http://www.fglaysher.com/NYTpr.htm


In predictable fashion The New York Times Book Review and much
of the media have chosen to support the more radical and supposedly
"enlightened" viewpoint on the tiff with The White House and Laura Bush.

A more misguided and wrong-headed response could
not exist. It's so fraught with cliches I hardly know where to start.
In general, it's a pity that Sam Hamill, and others who think like
him, demonstrate once again that poetry, as defined by them
at least, indeed doesn't matter, so complete is their inability
to think seriously about the threat represented by Saddam Hussein
and his weapons of mass destruction. Their ridiculous pose of mounting
the barricades is really quite contemptible. It is clear that the crowd
alluded to by Mr. Hamill summons poetry to their own radical
distortions and agendas, achieving only a further marginalization
of an art that has all too often, among some, lost allegiance to
the civilizing values of peace, which require defense never more so
than now.

Far from "the conscience of our culture," such poets have
no sense of history and the deep obligations of our country, to
ourselves and to the world, which the burden of power lays
upon us at this juncture. President Bush is right to call the United
Nations to live up to its founding Charter, to be a common refuge
of defense, "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war,"
not merely consultation, reduced to babel. At this time of national
and international crisis, poets who betray their nation, art, and
humanity merit no audience at The White House.

For a different view of the issues involved, I invite your readers
to consider my essay "The Victory of World Governance":
www.fglaysher.com/WorldGov.htm

Frederick Glaysher
www.fglaysher.com
Earthrise Press

Poets who oppose the war are "betraying their nation"? Dude, that's drinking the Kool-Aid. Mostly they are guilty of writing bad poetry: Nothing stinks like political verse, and some of this stuff is truly wretched, like Amateur Poetry Night at Barnes and Noble.

You seem to be in a bit of an ideological straitjacket yourself: The future Poet Laureate of the Bagdhad Occupied Zone? Perhaps an oil tanker in your name?

Dear 100 poets against the war,

Think of the statues of the Buddha in Afghanistan.
They were there for thousands of years. They had
nothing to do with the United States or with Israel. Yet they were destroyed by the Taliban.
The ideology that fostered that act is rampaging
through the Islamic world. If undetered, that
ideology coupled with oil wealth will eventually
undermind the freedom the poets enjoy. It was not
the poets who defeated the NAZIS nor the Communists, it was military power,and the power
of ideas in part inspired by poets. Had Shakespeare been German would we have ever had
Hitler?
Knee jerk opposition is easy. Solutions to the
vehement problems of the world much harder. If
a disaster of enormous capacity should befall
this nation(as a result of a terroristic attack)
will the poets and can the poets fix it?

Yours in the spaces between truths

Charlie Vermont MD

do you smoke crack? because that diatribe made absolutely no fucking sense. The Taliban destroyed the Buddhas, therefore we have to destroy Saddam so we don't end with rampaging shieks through Bel Air like semitic Beverly Hillbillies, which would never have been a possibility if only the Arabs had produced their own Shakespeare, which el Al Bard would have compelled them to build powerful militaries to hunt down Islamic fundamentalists? Is that, like, basically it? it's no wonder the rest of the world isn't buying our Iraq war line. they don't even understand it!

Mike,

I don't believe your comments address the seriousness of the situation facing our country and the world.

For a different view of the issues involved, I invite your readers
to consider my essay "The Victory of World Governance":
www.fglaysher.com/WorldGov.htm

Frederick Glaysher
www.fglaysher.com

Perhaps Stephen Dobyns best addresses the advocates of Iraqi war (which isn't) in his poem, "Sword"

"You alone are the weapon you are trying to put down."

David Plumb