By SIMON HOUPT, Globe and
Mail
Friday, January 31, 2003 – Print Edition,
Page A1
NEW YORK -- America's poets are too political for the White House.
This week, first lady Laura Bush abruptly cancelled a Feb. 12 poetry
symposium at the White House after she learned that some of the invited
poets intended to disrupt the event with
antiwar verses to protest the Bush administration's aggressive stand
toward Iraq.
"While Mrs. Bush respects the right of all Americans to express their
opinions, she, too, has opinions and believes it would be inappropriate to
turn a literary event into a political forum," said a spokeswoman for Mrs.
Bush, a former librarian whose pet project is the promotion of museums and
libraries.
Most of the invited poets are vocal
opponents of the Bush administration, including Sam Hamill, an
award-winning poet and publisher with a long
history of protesting against U.S. military aggression.
"I'm sure the person who put my name on the list is looking for a job,"
joked Mr. Hamill, who asked friends to send him antiwar poems he could
compile into an anthology for the event.
Many of the invited poets said they were
bemused and disturbed by the sudden turn of events, since the symposium
was to have celebrated the notably political poets Langston Hughes and Walt Whitman, as well as
Emily Dickinson.
"I saw profound irony in their choice of poets," Mr. Hamill said. "These people wouldn't
let Walt Whitman within a mile of the White House -- the good gay gray
poet! I don't believe anybody there has ever
read Whitman."
Yesterday, two former U.S. poets laureate
joined the growing chorus of attacks.
Stanley Kunitz, poet laureate 2000-01, told reporters, "I think
there was a general feeling that the current administration is not really
a friend of the poetic community and that its program of attacking Iraq is
contrary to the humanitarian position that is at the centre of the poetic
impulse."
The 1993-95 poet laureate, Rita Dove, who
declined an invitation to the symposium titled Poetry and the American
Voice, said in a statement: "The abrupt cancellation of the symposium by
the White House confirms my suspicion that the Bush administration is not
interested in poetry when it refuses to remain in the ivory tower, and
that this White House does not wish to open its doors to an 'American
Voice' that does not echo the administration's misguided policies."
Pulitzer Prize-winner Philip Levine said the event was cancelled before
he could even turn down his invitation.
"I had no doubt in my mind that I couldn't go, if only because of the
hideous use of language that emanates from this White House. The lying,
the Orwellian euphemisms," he said.
Mr. Hamill says he has received almost 2,000 poems, including
contributions from Pulitzer Prize-winners Yusef Komunyakaa and W.S.
Merwin. The poems will be posted next week on the Web site,
PoetsAgainstTheWar.org.
Artists have used official invitations in the past to protest against
U.S. government policies. In 1965, poet
Robert Lowell registered his opposition to the Vietnam War by refusing to
attend a White House arts festival.
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