The New Criterion

Readers will recall the pain and anguish which gripped the Poetry Community in the winter of 2003 when Laura Bush, the Dark Queen, invited a group of poets and critics to the White House to celebrate American poetry. As soon became evident, Mrs. Bush had sharply underestimated the persistence of adolescence among certain representatives of that craft and sullen art. The United States was preparing to rid the world of a monstrous tyrant in Iraq. For the poet and publisher Sam Hamill, this was cause not for celebration but an excuse to relive the anti-war protests of the 1960s. Mr. Hamill, one of the invitees to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, took to cyberspace and mounted an email campaign calling on his fellow scribes to boycott the event and organize a series of demonstrations against the impending conflict in Iraq. It was, Mr. Hamill noted, an opportunity to “reconstitute a Poets Against the War movement like the one organized to speak out against th ...

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