White House shelves poetry symposium over planned anti-war protest
By The Associated Press
01.30.03
NEW YORK — The White House postponed a poetry symposium out of concerns it would be politicized after some poets said they wanted to protest military action against Iraq.
The symposium on the poetry of Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes and Walt Whitman had been scheduled for Feb. 12. No future date has been announced for the event, to be held by first lady Laura Bush.
“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,” Noelia Rodriguez, a spokeswoman for the first lady, said yesterday.
Mrs. Bush, a former librarian who has made teaching and early childhood development her signature issues, has held a series of White House symposiums to salute America’s authors. The gatherings are usually lively affairs with discussions of literature and its impact on society.
But the poetry symposium quickly inspired a nationwide protest. Sam Hamill, a poet and founder of the highly regarded Copper Canyon Press, declined the invitation and e-mailed friends asking for antiwar poems or statements.
“Make February 12 a day of Poetry Against the War. We will compile an anthology of protest to be presented to the White House on that afternoon,” the e-mail reads.
He had expected about 50 responses; he’s gotten more than 1,500, including contributions from W.S. Merwin, Adrienne Rich and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Hamill will post all the submissions on a Web site he expects to have ready early next week.
“I’m putting in 18-hour days. I’m 60, and I’m tired, but it’s pretty wonderful,” says Hamill, author of such collections as Destination Zero and Gratitude. Copper Canyon Press, based in Port Townsend, Wash., published last fall’s winner of the National Book Award for poetry, Ruth Stone’s In the Next Galaxy.
White House invitations have inspired protests before. In 1965, poet Robert Lowell refused to attend a White House arts festival, citing opposition to the Vietnam War.
Marilyn Nelson, Connecticut’s poet laureate, said yesterday she had accepted her invitation to the poetry symposium and criticized the White House for trying to silence the voice of American artists.
“I had decided to go because I felt my presence would promote peace,” she said. “I had commissioned a fabric artist for a silk scarf with peace signs painted on it. I thought just by going there and shaking Mrs. Bush’s hand and being available for the photo ops, my scarf would make a statement.”
Another state poet laureate, New Jersey’s Amiri Baraka, was also involved in a recent political controversy. Baraka wrote a poem implying Israel had advance knowledge of the 2001 terrorist attacks, leading critics to call for his resignation.