POets wax eloquent against Pentagon war
By Minnie Bruce Pratt
Poets are joining in the mounting, vociferous protests over
the Bush administration and its drive toward war on Iraq.
Sam Hamill, founder of Copper Canyon Press, was invited to a
White House symposium on "Poetry and the American Voice,"
hosted by First Lady Laura Bush. He asked friends via the
internet for anti-war poems to take with him.
In three days he had 1,500, and the Bushes had canceled the
symposium.
Now Hamill has received almost 9,000 poems. And even U.S.
Poet Laureate Billy Collins has declared he opposes the war.
(poetsagainstthewar.org)
The original date of the symposium, Feb. 12, turned into a
day of poetry against the war. Some 160 poetry readings all
across the U.S. brought out thousands who also opposed the U.S.
intent to wage war on Iraq.
Hamill's efforts recall the earlier action of singer Eartha
Kitt. Invited to a luncheon at Lyndon Johnson's White House in
1968, she used the occasion to speak out forcefully against the
U.S. war in Vietnam. Kitt was viciously attacked for her
bravery.
The current poets' protest was also recently criticized by
powerbroker Leonard Garment. He described their action as "bad
behavior"--as if they were unruly children. (New York Times,
Feb. 8) But the very fact that Garment had to weigh in with his
opinion betrays the significance of this cultural resistance to
the war. And his comments contain an undertone of threat that
artists who speak out will meet with reprisals.
That's because Garment, once special counsel to Richard
Nixon, headed up a congressional commission in the 1990s that
set up legislation setting limits on federal arts grants to
certain artists--those whose work challenged the reactionary
religious, economic or gender/ sex status quo.
Right-wing attacks on feminist, gay and lesbian artists by
conservative Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) and the American Family
Association gave the opening for this censorship. But the
government suppression of alternative points of view in the
arts paralleled its intensive campaign against other kinds of
information.
The FCC threatened to cancel the licenses of radio stations
that aired programs with explicit safe-sex information for gay
men. (Washington Post, July 13, 1990) Louis Sullivan, at that
time Health and Human Services secretary, repudiated portions
of a report on youth suicide, commissioned by his own
department, because those recommendations were about preventing
the deaths of lesbian and gay young people--and didn't
"strengthen family values." (Washington Blade, Oct. 5,
1990)
This suppression of information was put in place at the same
time that the U.S. launched its attack on Iraq in the first
Gulf War. Students were denied the right to protest on
university campuses. Arab Americans were questioned by the FBI
about their political beliefs. Conscientious objectors in the
military were shipped out before their appeals were processed.
Government workers feared their anti-war sentiments could cost
them their jobs. (Washington Post, Jan. 29, 1991)
Now, in the build-up toward a new war on Iraq, it's
déjà vu all over again. Unknown numbers of
Muslim, Arab and South Asian individuals have been imprisoned
in the U.S. since Sept. 11, 2001--without release of their
names or the charges against them. Students at universities
have been threatened with expulsion for protesting against the
war. (democraticunderground.com, June 14, 2002)
Meanwhile, a massive tide of resistance is rising against
the domestic and foreign tyrannies of the U.S. government. And
out of this crisis of capitalism, some artists are infusing old
cultural forms with the new content of struggle:
As Pippa Brush writes:
I will speak out, she says,
because I can no longer
stay silent,
because I can no longer
let this happen
in my name,
because I want
those I am told are
my enemies
to eat, not to die.
Minnie Bruce Pratt, a writer and white anti-racist
activist, was denounced by Sen. Jesse Helms and the right-wing
American Family Association in 1990 for the lesbian
content of her poetry. Her poem, "After the Anti-War
March," is online at www.poetsagainstthewar.org
Reprinted from the Feb. 27, 2003, issue of
Workers World newspaper
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