What does Peter Coyote have
in common with Marvin Bell? The same thing that Clayton Eshleman has in common
with Anselm Berrigan, Bill Berkson with Maxine Kumin,
Ursala LeGuin with Julia Vinograd, and Stanley Kunitz with
August Highland. All have participated in Sam Hamill’s
still-growing poets protest against the war.
As hokey as the official
chapbook of Poets Against the War might be, the
website’s database of more than 5,000 poets is a remarkable collection of the
diversity of American writing, an amazing statement in opposition to a war in
which the shooting has not yet begun. While The
New Criterion’s Roger Kimball might not recognize these names, here (based
on the most perfunctory scroll through the website’s index) are a few that
might be familiar to you:
Not all of these links lead
to poems – several are statements of conscience. And I’m sure that as my eyes
literally glazed over the table of contents, I missed a lot of other obvious
“name brand” poets. The list above represents less than four percent of what
can be found at the website and I heartily recommend scrolling through &
reading widely. One way to start is to read everything from your neck of the
woods. Collectively, it has that mind-numbing, awe-inspiring overwhelming
quality I will always associate with the AIDS Quilt.
Given the balkanization of
American letters & Sam Hamill’s own
less-than-innocent role in same – the site’s chapbook itself underscores the
problem perfectly – I think it takes an enormous amount of goodwill & sense
of urgency to send a poem or statement to this project. That so many American
(& a few Canadian) poets have done so is a testament to the lateness of the
hour & the importance of the idea. If/when this war begins,
these writers are on record that George W’s assault on the people of Iraq
