| | The war-and-peace pages of this website are no longer being updated, but remain as a resource of previous articles and links. Some of the external links may no longer work. Reader Comments ~ Click here to send us your feedback! Poets against the war In general, it's a pity that Sam Hamill, and others who think like him, demonstrate once again that poetry, as defined by them at least, indeed doesn't matter, so complete is their inability to think seriously about the threat represented by Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction.... It is clear that the crowd alluded to by Mr. Hamill summons poetry to their own radical distortions and agendas, achieving only a further marginalization of an art that has all too often, among some, lost allegiance to the civilizing values of peace, which require defense never more so than now. Far from "the conscience of our culture," such poets have no sense of history and the deep obligations of our country, to ourselves and to the world, which the burden of power lays upon us at this juncture. President Bush is right to call the United Nations to live up to its founding Charter, to be a common refuge of defense, "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war," not merely consultation, reduced to babel. At this time of national and international crisis, poets who betray their nation, art, and humanity merit no audience at The White House. -- Frederick Glaysher www.fglaysher.com Reply: The definition of an "ad hominem attack (abusive): instead of attacking an assertion, the argument attacks the person who made the assertion," as in "their inability to think seriously about the threat" and the generalized summary of all "their own radical distortions and agendas...." Mr. Glaysher obviously differs with Mr. Hamill (and the more than 8000 other poets who responded to Mr. Hamill's invitation) on the purpose and function of poetry in life and society, but no where does he deal with any of the specific arguments about the war. As to the purpose and value of poetry, this is not the forum for that discussion. | |
