[NetBehaviour] [waynepeace] Fw: No Place for a Poet at a Banquet of Shame - bySharon Olds (fwd)

[Alan Sondheim]

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Date: Thu, 22 Sep 2005 08:09:44 -0700
From: Sebastian Mendler <smendler at WELL.COM>
Reply-To: Philosophy and Psychology of Cyberspace <CYBERMIND at LISTSERV.AOL.COM>
To: CYBERMIND at LISTSERV.AOL.COM
Subject: [waynepeace] Fw: No Place for a Poet at a Banquet of Shame - bySharon
     Olds (fwd)

fyi

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Skip Mendler                             IF BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING
info: www.skipmendler.com                LET'S KEEP HIM ENTERTAINED

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Date: Thu, 22 Sep 2005 08:34:21 -0400
From: Fran Hepburn <franh at in4web.com>
To: sullivanpeace <sullivancountypeace at yahoogroups.com>
Cc: waynepeace <waynepeace at yahoogroups.com>
Subject: [waynepeace] Fw: No Place for a Poet at a Banquet of Shame -
     bySharon Olds


----- Original Message -----
From: Lieve Snellings
To: womeninblack at listas.nodo50.org
Sent: Wednesday, September 21, 2005 12:58 PM
Subject: [womeninblack] No Place for a Poet at a Banquet of Shame - bySharon Olds


----- Original Message -----
From: Pamela Peniston


I love her writing--now I love her even more.


No Place for a Poet at a Banquet of Shame
by SHARON OLDS


> For reasons spelled out below, the poet Sharon Olds has declined to
> attend the National Book Festival in Washington, which, coincidentally
> or not, takes place September 24, the day of an antiwar mobilization
> in the capital. Olds, winner of a National Book Critics Circle Award
> and professor of creative writing at New York University, was invited
> along with a number of other writers by First Lady Laura Bush to read
> from their works. Three years ago artist Jules Feiffer declined to
> attend the festival's White House breakfast as a protest against the
> Iraq War.
>
> Laura Bush,  First Lady
> The White House
>
> Dear Mrs. Bush,
>
> I am writing to let you know why I am not able to accept your kind
> invitation to give a presentation at the National Book Festival on
> September 24, or to attend your dinner at the Library of Congress or
> the breakfast at the White House.
>
> In one way, it's a very appealing invitation. The idea of speaking at
> a festival attended by 85,000 people is inspiring! The possibility of
> finding new readers is exciting for a poet in personal terms, and in
> terms of the desire that poetry serve its constituents--all of us who
> need the pleasure, and the inner and outer news, it delivers.
>
> And the concept of a community of readers and writers has long been
> dear to my heart. As a professor of creative writing in the graduate
> school of a major university, I have had the chance to be a part of
> some magnificent outreach writing workshops in which our students have
> become teachers. Over the years, they have taught in a variety of
> settings: a women's prison, several New York City public high schools,
> an oncology ward for children. Our initial program, at a 900-bed state
> hospital for the severely physically challenged, has been running now
> for twenty years, creating along the way lasting friendships between
> young MFA candidates and their students--long-term residents at the
> hospital who, in their humor, courage and wisdom, become our teachers.
>
> When you have witnessed someone nonspeaking and almost nonmoving spell
> out, with a toe, on a big plastic alphabet chart, letter by letter,
> his new poem, you have experienced, close up, the passion and
> essentialness of writing. When you have held up a small cardboard
> alphabet card for a writer who is completely nonspeaking and nonmoving
> (except for the eyes), and pointed first to the A, then the B, then C,
> then D, until you get to the first letter of the first word of the
> first line of the poem she has been composing in her head all week,
> and she lifts her eyes when that letter is touched to say yes, you
> feel with a fresh immediacy the human drive for creation,
> self-expression, accuracy, honesty and wit--and the importance of
> writing, which celebrates the value of each person's unique story and
> song.
>
> So the prospect of a festival of books seemed wonderful to me. I
> thought of the opportunity to talk about how to start up an outreach
> program. I thought of the chance to sell some books, sign some books
> and meet some of the citizens of Washington, DC. I thought that I
> could try to find a way, even as your guest, with respect, to speak
> about my deep feeling that we should not have invaded Iraq, and to
> declare my belief that the wish to invade another culture and another
> country--with the resultant loss of life and limb for our brave
> soldiers, and for the noncombatants in their home terrain--did not
> come out of our democracy but was instead a decision made "at the top"
> and forced on the people by distorted language, and by untruths. I
> hoped to express the fear that we have begun to live in the shadows of
> tyranny and religious chauvinism--the opposites of the liberty,
> tolerance and diversity our nation aspires to.
>
> I tried to see my way clear to attend the festival in order to bear
> witness--as an American who loves her country and its principles and
> its writing--against this undeclared and devastating war.
>
> But I could not face the idea of breaking bread with you. I knew that
> if I sat down to eat with you, it would feel to me as if I were
> condoning what I see to be the wild, highhanded actions of the Bush
> Administration.
>
>
> What kept coming to the fore of my mind was that I would be taking
> food from the hand of the First Lady who represents the Administration
> that unleashed this war and that wills its continuation, even to the
> extent of permitting "extraordinary rendition": flying people to other
> countries where they will be tortured for us.
>
> So many Americans who had felt pride in our country now feel anguish
> and shame, for the current regime of blood, wounds and fire. I thought
> of the clean linens at your table, the shining knives and the flames
> of the candles, and I could not stomach it.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> SHARON OLDS



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