My Response to Poets Against the War

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Letters to the Editor / PRESS RELEASE
The New York Times Book Review
229 W. 43rd Street
New York, New York 10036
books@nytimes.com  

"Poets Pit Pens Against Swords" by Martin Arnold. 
February 6, 2003
https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/06/books/06BOOK.html 


PRESS RELEASE - Feb. 6, 2003

My Response to Poets Against the War:
https://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, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and others who think 
like them, 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 a crumbling Tower of 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":
https://www.fglaysher.com/WorldGov.htm 

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

My comments or postings of my Press Release

The Penny Post by Andrei Codrescu
New York Downtown Express, NY - Apr 15, 2003 (response)
https://www.datelinealabama.com/article/2003/02/22/3862_war_art.php3 (quoted)
https://brothersjudd.blogspot.com/ 
https://www.cosmoetica.com/TOP48-DES45.htm 
https://inthesetimes.com/comments.php?id=67_0_4_0_C 
https://misnomer.dru.ca/activism/ (posted twice, twice deleted)
https://www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=1501&catcode=24 
https://www.anacortesonline.com/letters.tpl#65  
https://www.martinblyth.co.uk/iraqcrisis.htm 
https://66.246.23.2/~eolsen/archives/2003/02/02/104031.php  
https://www.godofthemachine.com/archives/00000317.html 
https://www.arras.net/circulars/archives/000152.html

The Victory of World Governance

ARTICLES and LETTERS of INTEREST / RESPONSE

Poets Against the War (Sam Hamill)
https://www.poetsagainstthewar.org./ 
("12,000 poets and counting - Click here to submit a poem")

My Response / Press Release emailed to over 1,500 
literary magazines, editors, & bookstores, including:

Student Strike for Books Not Bombs! LIST OF PARTICIPATING CAMPUSES 
https://www.nyspc.net/strikelist.html 3-10-03

Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s SPEAK OUT! 
staff@citylights.com 3-10-03

 "Anti-war Poetry Readings Everywhere on March 5!" donate@poetsagainstthewar.org on 2-22-03
Submitted to Sam Hamill’s website on 2-17-03
Emailed to info@poetsagainstthewar.org on 2-13-03

***** March 7, 2003, 11:20 a.m. Nonfighting Words
Poets against the war. By Mark Goldblatt
https://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-goldblatt030703.asp 
***** War of Words By Edward J. Renehan Jr.
TechCentralStation.com | March 5, 2003 
https://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=6466    
***** POETS AGAINST THE WAR Great for Sam Hamill’s Career, but Good for Poetry?
Christopher Frizzelle 
https://www.thestranger.com/current/books.html 
***** JUST SHUT UP by Neal Pollack
https://www.thestranger.com/2003-02-20/feature.html 
***** The Poets vs. The First Lady: The appalling manners and adolescent partisanship of our antiwar poets.
J. Bottum 02/17/2003, Volume 008, Issue 22 
https://www.weeklystandard.com/content/public/articles/000/000/002/228qjtzx.asp 
***** The Paranoid-Poet Planet: Rhetorical overkill and collateral damage to the language of political debate.
James Bowman
https://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-bowman021203.asp 
***** The night of the armies of the poets
Suzanne Fields
https://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/fields.htm 
Google’s News Server: Poets Against the War
https://news.google.com/news?q=%22Poets+Against+the+War%22&num=100&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=nn 
Europe/The Americas Friday - 07 March 2003 
US Students, Poets Join Anti-war Cry 
https://www.riyadhdaily.com.sa/cgi-bin/display_assay.pl?issue=Friday+-+07+March+2003&section=Europe/The+Americas&id=30284 
Poets Present Anti-War Poems to Congress
By ELIZABETH WOLFE
https://myopr.com/display/ap/Entertainment/d7pj7lto0.txt 
Laura Bush Weak in American Poetry 2003-02-24
https://english.pravda.ru/main/2003/02/24/43642.html
Echoes of past from web poets
By Jack Malvern
https://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,5461-590828,00.html
Poetic License Rejected by First Lady, Poets Spread Anti-War Message Across Country
By Dean Schabner
https://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/Entertainment/iraq_antiwarpoets030218.html

Ambiguity Is a Guest at a Readers’ Evening
By KELEFA SANNEH
https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/19/arts/19FISH.html 

Zen poet’s voice of dissent heard by anti-war literati
By CHRIS McGANN SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
https://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/109071_poets18.shtml 

Bards Not Bombs in NYC by Joy Press February 19 - 25, 2003
https://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0308/press2.php 

Port Townsend poet taking dispute with White House to CNN
2003-02-16 by KEVEN DREWS
https://www.peninsuladailynews.com/sited/story/html/121693 

Poets Admonish White House for ’Disinvitation’
Fox News Monday, February 17, 2003
https://foxnews.com/story/0,2933,78794,00.html 
Poets Against the War
By Joe Knowles 2.14.03 
https://inthesetimes.com/comments.php?id=67_0_4_0_C 
SUBJECT TO DEBATE by Katha Pollitt Posted February 6, 2003
Poetry Makes Nothing Happen? Ask Laura Bush
https://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030224&s=pollitt 
Mobilizing a Theater of Protest. Again. By JULIE SALAMON
https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/06/arts/06PROT.html 
A Song of Themselves By LEONARD GARMENT
https://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/08/opinion/08GARM.html?pagewanted=all&position=top 
U.S. Poet Laureate Opposes War with Iraq 
https://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0206-07.htm 
Poets for Peace
100 Poets Against The War
United Kingdom - Poets Against the War
Story in Chicago Poetry
Seattle Times - January 30 
NY Times  - January 31 
Toronto Globe and Mail - February 1 
BBC News - February 1 
The Guardian - February 1 
USA Today - February 1 
Seattle Post-Intelligencer - February 1 
Minnesota Star Tribune - February 1 
Sydney Morning Herald - February 1 
Yahoo-Associated Press - February 1 
Press Release - Readings in Washington DC, 2/12 (pdf) - February 9 

Excerpts

The "Peace" Movement: a Front for the Anti-American Left?
By Jamie Glazov FrontPageMagazine.com February 7, 2003

David Horowitz: "...All dissent is legitimate and should be protected speech. No dissent is treason as defined by the laws of the land. However, dissent that refuses to make a distinction between Iraq and America, dissent that compares our leaders to Nazis, dissent at this point in time that incites organized opposition to our nation’s efforts to defend itself is betrayal. Two presidents have asked for authorization to use force against Iraq, and both parties have voted to give that authorization to Bush. In war, some sort of basic unity against the enemy is necessary. To seek to disrupt that unity is to aid the enemy."

Voice of Iraqis - Why don’t antiwar types want to hear them?
By Amir Taheri February 26, 2003, 10:00 a.m.
https://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-taheri022603.asp 

"These people are mad," said Awad Nasser, one of Iraq’s most famous modernist poets. "They are actually signing up to sacrifice their lives to protect a tyrant’s death machine."

On the U.N. and war.
By NR Editors , from the March 10, 2003, issue of National Review
https://www.nationalreview.com/10mar03/editors031003a.asp 

"...the U.S. should explore creating an alternative U.N. consisting only of liberal democratic states that would be a better diplomatic forum than the collection of tyrannies, basketcases, and enemies of the U.S. that currently occupies One U.N. Plaza."

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