Poets Against War Are Such A Bore
By Murray Soupcoff (03/01/03)
February 12, 2003: In case you didn't know it, today is 'Poets Against War' Day. And I just can't tell you how excited I am about the prospect of poets all around America gathering to read their works "as a powerful statement of public and collective resistance to the Bush administration's drive toward war in Iraq." Those nasty warmongers, George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld, must be quaking in their boots -- especially at the thought of this afternoon's special reading from the Poets Against the War Anthology in Lafayette Park, across from the White House. Serves Dubyah and Rummy right for trying to disarm a rogue dictatorship like Iraq through war.
Indeed, never has the Bush administration been under such a concerted threat than by today's poetic assault on the politics of war. If the poetry on the Poets Against the War web site is any example, some of the most pretentious, cliche-filled claptrap will be hurled against the purveyors of war in the White House today. Forget Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. We're talking about a weapon that's even more terrible, painful and loathsome -- bad modern verse. The equivalent of one long, endless loud whine that seems to never stop. Now that's what I call a real weapon of destruction.
Once the sounds of today's tortured verse starts wafting into the Pentagon, even stoic Donald Rumsfeld will be frantically searching for the white flag of surrender. And what can we expect from the White House after its warmongering occupants hear the following painful "call to arms" for poets around the world, from Canadian anti-war wordsmith Bonnie Adams:
shame on you who shape our worldviews
through the media to sell air time,
shame on politicians worldwide
who desire to ensure their names in history books,
(sale of FEAR everywhere)
citizens everywhere, this is a call to arms,
arm yourselves with your inner truth,
reach for something beyond yourself,
be still inside & find where love for all can exist,
(all Nations are imagined communities)
Why George W. Bush himself will probably come running out of the White House, screaming: "I give up! I give up! Please stop! I'll call off the war! I'll call Tony Blair and tell him, we gotta have peace. I'll go to the UN and beg for more weapons inspectors, and a few more years to negotiate with Saddam! Anything! But please no more of that terrible, awful poetry of yours. No maas! No maas!"
Or more likely that's the fantasy of all the self-involved, self-promoting 5,300 untalented windbags who will join together today to "galvanize the country" with a day of poetic protest "to register their opposition to the Bush administration's headlong plunge toward war in Iraq."
After all, who knows least about defanging a sadistic, ruthless demagogue like Saddam Hussein than the beloved poets of our universities and campus coffee houses? Having spent most of their insular existences bitchily critiquing each other's empty narcisstic ravings in creative-writing seminars in the nation's universities, and cranking out their empty bluster in "little" literary magazines with big names that no-one ever reads, these bards for peace have accumulated a lifetime of experience that has prepared them for doing absoutely nothing of any practical value, except to apply for more literary grants and whine endlessly.
Indeed, who but a bunch of pampered, subsidized, unworldy poets would really think that only they could "make a difference" in influencing public policy in America? Talk about the irrelevant promoting irrevelance. The opinions of Billy Collins, the sitting U.S. poet laureate, mean as much to the American public as the actual title of U.S. poet laureate -- absolutely nothing.
Ask the average American who Billy Collins is and they'll guess he's a wide receiver for the New Orleans Saints, or that he's that nice-looking fella who used to emcee the Miss America pageant. Highlight America's official poet laureate in a TV news clip, and Americans will turn the channel.
Billy Collins may "publicly declare" his "opposition to war" and say he finds it increasingly difficult to keep "politics" out of his "official job as literary advocate." But who cares?
Nobody. And especially no-one of importance, except perhaps Nancy Pelosi, Senator Patty Murray (aka Senator FruitLoop) or Susan Sarandon. But certainly not the American people.
Who cares that Collins, Nobel laureate Derek Walcott, former U.S. poet laureate Richard Wilbur and about 40 other writers and artists signed an anti-war petition last month? Or that in England, British poet laureate Andrew Motion has written an anti-war poem that cites "elections, money, empire, oil" as the motivation for war? Absolutely no-one but these pretentious prats, their families and maybe Noam Chomsky and a few of his fawning groupies.
Yet, that's the wonder of it all. These self-important fools don't have a clue. They really think that today, with their tortured verse, they will galvanize America into a massive outpouring of opposition to the Bush administration. They really believe in their heart of hearts that Americans will be mobilized into action by such trite verbiage as the following words from noted anti-war bard, Rainbow Angel:
So gather all of your thoughts
And settle them freely
Release them, set yourself free and fly
To that awesome dreamy place
All together in unity!
Dream of Peace, all of us together
Dream out loud in the garden
The blind leading the blind no more
World peace is what we want, what we need
Together we dream peace
Together we are world peace!
What else is there to say, except: Please, Rainbow Angel and colleagues! No more! No maas! We surrender!
In fact, the spirit of the Poets Against War is so irresistable, it's hard to resist coming up with our very own personal contribution to today's protests in verse:
Poets against war
are such a bore
They make us snore
And wanna
go to war
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