Poets to gather to protest war with Iraq
Well, this ought to force Shrub to have a change of heart:
(CNN) -- A group of poets who have emerged as opponents to military action against Iraq are scheduled to have a reading Monday night in New York.
Playwright Arthur Miller, rapper Mos Def and at least four former U.S. poets laureate, including Rita Dove and Stanley Kunitz, will be among the artists and performers appearing at "Poems Not Fit for the White House," an antiwar gathering to be held Monday at Lincoln Center in New York.
The reading is the latest offshoot of a movement that began with a canceled White House poetry symposium. One of the poets invited to that event, Copper Canyon Press publisher Sam Hamill, sent an open letter of protest to first lady Laura Bush.
Hamill's missive, e-mailed to a handful of friends across the country, led to other poets taking up the cause. Even U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins has said he opposes war with Iraq and is finding it difficult to keep politics out of his work.
The first lady subsequently canceled the symposium, saying she "did not believe poetry should be used for political purposes."
Nevertheless, Hamill soon established a Web site, www.poetsagainstthewar.org, which has gathered more than 10,000 poems from 9,000 poets in less than a month.
Of course poetry shouldn't be used for political purposes, unless, of course, it's used to support your political purposes.
Perhaps poetry would be a more effective weapon if the poets went to Baghdad and offered themselves up as human shields. In the meantime, I've been working on some poetry of my own. Unfortunately, I'm still working on the first line. Let me know what you think....
There once was a man from Nantucket....
