Poets Take Aim at Laura Bush [Maggot Infested, Dope Smoking, Anti War Hippie Alert!]

See-BS News Politics Section ^ | February 4, 2003 SGT | Hillel Italie

[Our man in washington]

I think all these poets should immediately enlist.

I don't think they would help the military much, but at least we'd get better poems.

[ewing]

Well said, what poor guests.

[ewing]

Susan McDougal should be the Clinton 'poet lauerate!'

[ewing]

Or sign up as 'human shields'

[ricpic]

FROZEN POETS

Poets frozen in a block of ice.
"Epater Les Bourgoisie, they're not nice."
That act was tired a hundred years ago;
The air is stale with whines and woe.
Open up the windows, open up the doors.
It's time, o'ertime, for NEW raptures.

[WellsFargo94]

Probably another Vaginaterian. You know, no meat allowed.

That's funny. How much carpet did Dove have to munch with Hill to get to be the Poet Laureate???

[PBRSTREETGANG]

HAIKU!

God bless you.

[L.N. Smithee]

'I think there was a general feeling that the current Administration is not really a friend of the poetic community and that its program of attacking Iraq is contrary to the humanatarian position that is at the center of the poetic impulse,' Stanley Kunitz the 2000-2001 poet lauerate, said Thursday.

Here's some poetry...(ahem)..."Screw U."

[ricpic]

Bourgoisie should be Bourgeoisie.

[mombonn]

lol - thanks, I didn't realized I'd sneezed!

hehe, just thought I'd fight poetry with poetry.

[Luna]

'I think there was a general feeling that the current Administration is not really a friend of the poetic community and that its program of attacking Iraq is contrary to the humanatarian position that is at the center of the poetic impulse,' Stanley Kunitz the 2000-2001 poet lauerate, said Thursday.

I think he means poetic Marxist community. That would be more accurate. He shouldn't lump all poets into one corner, the git.

Kudos to Laura Bush. She's a great first lady.

[PBRSTREETGANG]

Good stuff. You are now an official member of the "poetic community"...

that supports Laura Bush.

[ewing]

You are too good!

[eaglebeak]

Is this what you think the war is about? Your "RAPTURES"?

[Skooz]

'I think there was a general feeling that the current Administration is not really a friend of the poetic community and that its program of attacking Iraq is contrary to the humanatarian position that is at the center of the poetic impulse,' Stanley Kunitz the 2000-2001 poet lauerate, said Thursday.

You know, I'm a poet of sorts and I don't belong to any "poetic community" nor do I feel a "poetic impulse." The latter sounds kind of kinky and exciting, though.

[ricpic]

"Is this what you think the war is about? Your 'RAPTURES'?"

Did it ever occur to you that the state of poetry would improve immensely if it were de-politicized?

There are a whole lot of things in this world to get rapturous about other than the political.

[monkey]

Merwin is the class of the group mentioned. I'm always sorry when he occasionally gets involved in these situations. But he has some sense of intellectual and moral responsibility, which all the others are lacking.

From an interview:

DB: You mentioned last night about the heavy impact of reading Czeslaw Milosz's The Captive Mind. Why do you think that during a period like the Sixties (which was very political), the book did not really get any attention?

Merwin: I simply don't know. I think that the only theory that I have about it is that Milosz was so critical of the Communist world and there was a great deal of leftist sympathy in the Sixties. For example, the SDS-oriented people felt that Milosz was right-wing just as many Marxists felt about Camus and The Rebel. I've always felt that this was wrong, I mean in the sense of being incorrect. There's a kind of outlawry that I have been drawn to all my life which is not doctrinaire, which is neither right nor left. In fact, it's opposed to them both. Every time I come back toward a political stance, I never stay in one very long because every time I move toward one I tend to partake of that anarchy, a suspicion of all their houses. That's the only explanation I can think of as to why Milosz was not accepted more widely and was not read more widely in the Sixties. I don't remember when The Captive Mind was published, 1958, 1959, somewhere along in there. I know some of my friends read it and were excited about it at the time and it just seemed to disappear. I think it went out of print, too. It's been out of print for a long time because I've tried to get copies of it for my friends and couldn't find it.

[eaglebeak]

Huh? There are lots of poets who are not scuzzy left-wing gasbags, which seems to be the group above that is referring to itself as the "poetic community." Part of the problem, alas, is that the control exercised by the left over the academy and the publishing industry for the last 30 or 40 years has side-lined anybody who was not part of this self-defined [left wing] "poetic community."
Oddly enough, I have never heard their "poetry" on anyone's lips except their own. Some "poetic community."

About W.S. Merwin:

http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/merwin/life.htm

Statement

It would not have been possible for me ever to trust someone who acquired office by the shameful means Mr. Bush and his abettors resorted to in the last presidential election. His nonentity was rapidly becoming more apparent than ever when the catastrophe of Sept. 11, 2001, provided him and his handlers with a role for him, that of "wartime leader", which they, and he in turn, were quick to exploit. This role was used at once to silence all criticism of the man and his words as unpatriotic, and to provide the auspices for a sustained assault upon civil liberties, environmental protections, and general welfare. The perpetuation of this role of "wartime leader" is the primary reason-- more important even than the greed for oil fields and the wish to blot out his father's failure-- for the present determination to visit war upon Iraq, kill and maim countless people, and antagonize much of the world of which Mr. Bush had not heard until recently. The real iniquities of Saddam Hussein should be recognized, in this context, as the pretexts they are. His earlier atrocities went unmentioned as long as he was an ally of former Republican administrations, which were happy, in their time, to supply him with weapons. I think that someone who was maneuvered into office against the will of the electorate, as Mr. Bush was, should be allowed to make no governmental decisions (including judicial appointments) that might outlast his questionable term, and if the reasons for war were many times greater than they have been said to be I would oppose any thing of the kind under such "leadership". To arrange a war in order to be re-elected outdoes even the means employed in the last presidential election. Mr. Bush and his plans are a greater danger to the United States than Saddam Hussein.

-- W. S. Merwin

http://www.poetsagainstthewar.org/poetindex.htm

[ken5050]

You have a GREAT future as a headline writer......kudos..