Yep, they’re organizing, as Len Garment notes in this morning’s Times. The dreaded march of stanzas, caesuras and iambic pentameters has begun. If you feel like a dose of acute nausea, take a look at the website called “Poetsagainstthewar.org.” It contains the usual anti-Bush hysteria. Here’s a Sontag Award nominee from W.S. Merwin: “[I]f the reasons for war were many times greater than they have been said to be I would oppose any thing of the kind under such ‘leadership’. To arrange a war in order to be re-elected outdoes even the means employed in the last presidential election. Mr. Bush and his plans are a greater danger to the United States than Saddam Hussein.” Well at least we know where he’s coming from. But my favorite is a poem from one Marilyn Hacker. It contains verses such as the following:
“(‘God Bless America’ would be blasphemy
if there were a god concerned with humanity.)”
Charming, huh? Or this:
“Jews who learned their comportment from storm-troopers
act out the nightmares that woke their grandmothers;
Jews sit, black-clad, claim peace: their vigil’s
not on the whistlestop pol’s agenda.‘Our’ loss is grave: American, sacralized.
We are dismayed that dead Palestinians,
Kashmiris, Chechens, Guatemalans,
also are mourned with demands for vengeance.‘Our’ loss is grave, that is, till a president
in spanking-new non-combatant uniform
mandates a war: then, men and women
dying for oil will be needed heroes.I’d rather live in France (or live anywhere
there’s literate debate in the newspapers).
The English language is my mother
tongue, but it travels. Asylum, exile?”
Asylum, please.
The Dish 