Short essay on the obligations and foibles of American Poets' response to the current conflict in Iraq
This backwardness, this retrograde advance, this cowardice, is a stain on the eternal reputation of poetry. Poetry has ever been in the vanguard of liberty, and never (or at least never easily and never fully) in the ranks of its detractors. Today's poets, while they refuse to honestly count themselves among the anti-libertarians, have also refused to utter the encouragements that an embattled liberty deserves. Our enemies are not their enemies. Never have so many run so fast from so few. As I say, an eternal stain.
In the hand of each fleeing poet, a pen, before each poet only a blank expanse of blood-drained 80 pound pulp paper stock, ready to surrender. Little flags in the hands of these messianic mumble-mouths oh so ready to damn their own culture and time, to castigate their freely elected leaders, to condemn all the liberalities of peace and purpose that have given them this great strength to defend themselves boldly and without fail. The "enemy" that these pencil-pushers take aim at is the only one ready to die for their right to castigate him--a figure of Christian compassion and protection--a dad who lets his wayward child take a poke at his belly without penalty. This is the enemy the poets have chosen to hate, the sole ugly figure against which they are willing to launch all of their invective and rhetoric. Their tide of ill-will has no cup of cold water for our erstwhile allies who are as indifferent as the poets to our freedom. No, this tide of ill-will strives to drown a single heroic figure, the protector, an indulgent giant who holds their loquacious freedoms in his mute heart.
"The pen is mightier than the sword," we have been told, and yet, in defense of its own existence, the American pen lays itself aside from this vital contest. Truly I say the poets have judged--and with telling poignancy--the persuasive power of their own claustrophobic coterie: they believe themselves effective only against those who will never strike back; they will work only alongside or within a cozy community of like-minded aggressors, nitpicking the unraveling weave of their own culture--a culture nursed in liberty and whose strong expressive force they themselves are supposed to be.
They do not find themselves ready, willing, or able to face their true enemy--the enemy whose actions threaten their very existence; the enemy of all we know and are of poetry! Only poetry can vanquish such a foe; only poetry can cleave him to his core, can sap his will to strike us by deploying the persistent visions of our verse.
Today's poets have judged this challenge to be eons beyond their pens' prowess--too lonely and brave an occupation for their brains and hands. To them I say: to arms! Discard your self-judgment, as correct as it is, reject this neurosis and death--to arms! Let not your brother's bullets and his bravery die in your verses' stead. Use each breath, each letter, each syllable and moment, to rescue that which is tenderest and best within us. Let no enemy turn you into a collaborator--strike with blinding right at his very essence-- strike with word and voice and vision--strike thus, and bravely, and you can never fail.
Gregg Glory
General political principles, neatly summed up in The Sharon Statement.