The official excuse released from the White House went thus: “While Mrs. Bush respects and believes in the right of all Americans to express their opinions, she, too, has opinions and believes that it would be inappropriate to turn what is intended to be a literary event into a political forum.”
Opinion is a flitting thing,
But Truth, outlasts the Sun—
She dealt her pretty words like Blades—
How glittering they shone—
And every One unbared a Nerve
Or wantoned with a Bone—
She never deemed— she hurt—
That— is not Steel's Affair—
What about this idea that certain opinions have no place in a symposium on “Poetry and the American Voice?”
Confirming All who analyze
In the Opinion fair
That Eloquence is when the Heart
Has not a Voice to spare—
The Bone that has no Marrow,
What Ultimate for that?
It is not fit for Table
For Beggar or for Cat.
A Bone has obligations—
A Being has the same—
A Marrowless Assembly
Is culpabler than shame.--
Your concept, then, of honoring poets diverges widely from that of Mrs. Bush, who seems to have fixed on the idea that the show is all, and that core convictions would mar the tea-party atmosphere. Is this tea-party concept of poets based on reality or fanciful thinking?
A Saucer holds a Cup
In sordid human Life
But in a Squirrel's estimate
A Saucer hold a Loaf.
A Table of a Tree
Demands the little King
And every Breeze that run along
His Dining Room do swing.
How do you rank Poetry, in importance?
I reckon— when I count it all—
First— Poets— Then the Sun—
Then Summer— Then the Heaven of God—
And then— the List is done—
But, looking back— the First so seems
To Comprehend the Whole—
The Others look a needless Show—
So I write— Poets— All—
Censorship abounds these days. The White House just canceled their symposium because antiwar poems were deemed “inappropriate” and the U.N. recently draped the mural of Picasso's “Guernica” because the depiction of the horrors of war was deemed an “inappropriate” background to press statements on the impending war. Your thoughts on how “appropriate” artistic antiwar expression is?
The Martyr Poets— did not tell—
But wrought their Pang in syllable—
That when their mortal name be numb—
Their mortal fate— encourage Some—
The Martyr Painters— never spoke—
Bequeathing— rather— to their Work—
That when their conscious fingers cease—
Some seek in Art— the Art of Peace—
Will all this clamping down have a chilling effect on other antiwar efforts?
A Tooth upon Our Peace
The Peace cannot deface—
Then Wherefore be the Tooth?
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