So Kipling and Rupert Brook thought before WWI, and four years of
slaughter later nothing had been saved.  Are you suggesting that poets
should either say what governments tell them or shut up?  I find this very
strange.  And, on another note, do you think the millions who marched are
all wrong and only Bush, et. al. right?  How could that be?  And what
happened to "a decent respect for the opinions of mankind"?

What are you suggesting?


Date sent:              Thu, 20 Feb 2003 19:04:54 -0500
Send reply to:          "T. S. Eliot Discussion forum." <[log in to unmask]>
From:                   Earthrise Press <[log in to unmask]>
Organization:           www.fglaysher.com
Subject:                Poets Against the War
To:                     [log in to unmask]

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":
http://www.fglaysher.com/WorldGov.htm

Frederick Glaysher
www.fglaysher.com
Earthrise Press
P. O. Box 81842
Rochester, MI 48308-1842 USA
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