Sherry Chandler

Terroristic Poetry

In some countries of the world, poets are jailed as dangerous dissenters. In some countries of the world, poets and not B-list actors have been elected to the presidency. In the United States, poets and poetry have been marginalized, characterized as a small group of academics and theorists mostly talking to one another. Poetry in the United States rather famously “makes nothing happen.” Or, as was implied by some when Sam Hamill boycotted Laura Bush’s symposium in protest of pre-emptive war, it should be content in its ghetto, that higher realm called art, and should deliver that spiritual news “men die miserably everyday for lack of.”

Now, however, some rightwing watchdog groups are declaring poets dangerous. Here is the opening passage of an article from American Thinker that was picked up by Campus Watch:

Poetry is a window on the human soul. But the politics of American poetry, in recent years have veered into more and more radical territory, as an increasing number of poets openly declare their allegiance with ‘Palestine,’ and implicitly, with terror. Academics with one foot in Middle Eastern Studies and another in literature and poetry are the prime conduits of this degrading development. A few names that come to mind are Tom Paulin[1], a literature lecturer at Oxford University, former New Jersey poet laureate Amiri Baraka[2], Marylin Hacker[3], and Alicia Ostriker[4] at Rutgers University.

Interesting to note who is not on this list: Sam Hamill and the thousands of poets who protested and continue to protest the war in Iraq and the policy of pre-emptive war. No, the dangerous poets are limited to those that are perceived as anti-Israel and pro-Palestine. Campus Watch subtitles itself “Monitoring Middle Eastern Studies on Campus.” It is a project of Middle East Forum, characterized by Juan Cole as a pro-Likud group masquerading as a think tank. Cole sees the purpose of this group as spamming, astroturfing, just generally intimidating and bullying any opposition, especially from liberal Jews, to the current aggressive policy in Israel.

I learned about this blacklisting of poets on the Wom-Po list, where poets are banding together in a letter-writing campaign to Campus Watch. Sort of flaming the flamers. If you would like to declare yourself a dangerous leftist poet, you can use this handy link at Lisa Jarnot’s Lisablog.

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