[Mb-civic] Sharon Olds: No Place for a Poet at a Banquet of Shame

[Mike Blaxill]

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/092305S.shtml


No Place for a Poet at a Banquet of Shame
    By Sharon Olds
    The Nation

    Monday 19 September 2005
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
("Mr. Feiffer Regrets," November 11, 2002). We
suggest that invitees to this year's event
consider following their example.
- Editors, The Nation

    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