February 17, 2003
POET FOR THE WAR:
Letters to the Editor / PRESS RELEASE (Frederick Glaysher, 2/06/03)The New York Times Book Review
229 W. 43rd Street
New York, New York 10036
books@nytimes.comFeb. 6, 2003
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".
Frederick Glaysher
www.fglaysher.com
earthrisepress@comcast.net
While we're less sanguine than Mr. Glaysher about the potential of the U.N. to be an effective enforcer of international law, we highly recommend his narrative poem, The Bower of Nil. And here's an interview we did with him. Posted by Orrin Judd at February 17, 2003 1:21 PM
As I understood it, Mrs. Bush's confab was to be
about some dead poets. Hamill et al. could
not stand for it not to be all about them.
Possibly Mrs. Bush should hold a meeting on
Arabic poetry. That'd make the leftists squirm.