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Poets Against War continues the tradition of socially engaged poetry by creating venues for poetry as a voice against war, tyranny and oppression. |
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USMC Brig. Gen. Smedley Butler, War is a Racket (1933):After winning the Marine Corps Brevet Medal, the Army Distinguished Service Medal, the Navy Distinguished Service Medal, the French Order of the Black Star and two Congressional Medals of Honor, Butler said, "I spent 33 years and four months in active service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927, I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents." Read his speech here: |
As we approach eight years since founding Poets Against (the) War in January 2003, it is time to reconsider our usefulness. We have anthologized http://dream-trading.co.za/1xbet-promo-code-and-deposit-bonus nearly 30,000 poems by 26,000 poets in opposition to the invasion and occupation of Iraq, as well as wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Following our "drawdown" in Iraq, there are still 50,000 U.S. military personnel and thousands of mercenaries occupying the country and Al Qaeda membership appears to be growing as we continue to build more than a dozen military bases there. We must consider the sources of these wars, the notion of American "exceptionalism," continued corporate empire-building, and their relationship to increasing poverty and deteriorating infrastructure in our own country, not to mention the moral consequences of policies that make us all complicitous in the spread of terrorism and murder. As Geoffrey Hill has written, "The burden the writer's conscience must bear is that the horror might become that hideously outrageous thing, a cliché." We are closing submissions to the anthology for the present. It will remain open for reading. I will continue to seek out and post a variety features and a few links. Nearly eight years and more than a hundred thousand needless deaths ago, I asked my fellow poets to "speak for the conscience of our country" in opposition to a slaughter. Today, we continue to read of secret prisons and torture regimes, the bombing of civilians from unmanned planes. We know that two-thirds of Iraqi war casualties were "civilian." Human life is trifling, expendable, "an unfortunate consequence." The rich have grown infinitely richer; the poor, poorer. Our schools continue to decline and our country’s infrastructure is crumbling. We have fewer civil liberties and less hope for the future. We poets can provide a vision for hope if we are careful with our language and firm in our resolution. Meanwhile we all pay a terrible price: the war debt comes home in many ways. And the "conscience of our country" remains 1xbet deposit bonus as elusive as ever in the eyes of the world. —Sam Hamill "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." Behzad Zarrinpour, Iranian Poet
A Little LaterWe don’t just sleep under one roof Otherwise this place is no different from the barracks We go to sleep with our shoes and tight belts at the cock’s crow we rush to the fields with all the equipments and all day we practice arraying our lines before an enemy who changes places with us every moment:
-A bus that passes far off your expectation cluttered and content tickets and a driver who shuts all the doors on you A little later: Redundant stops Pointless waiting and a crowd that doesn’t let the lights become green
And we keep shifting places in this way until the day ends then we touch the wall and return The one who reaches home before all only gets to wind his clock sooner than the others Behzad Zarrinpoor Translation: Maryam Ala Amjadi Rira Abbasi - Iranian Peace Activist
Click to read her poem "Oil Ailment".
Dennis Brutus 1924-2009 R.I.P.Dennis Vincent Brutus, poet and renowned human rights activist, died in Cape Town, South Africa, on 26 December 2009. Born November 28, 1924, his lifetime in the service of human rights is non pareil, from his long struggle against apartheid—-for which he was imprisoned-- to his final days of struggle on behalf of increasing awareness of global warming. He was a model and inspiration for what an engaged poet can accomplish. For his work on behalf of integrating sports, including the Olympics, he would have been inducted into the South African Sports Hall of Fame, but he refused to be honored by an organization that honored bigots in the past. For a fuller obituary, see the Independent (London), the NY Times, or Democracy Now. Martín EspadaStone Hammered to Gravel
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