Poets Against War continues the tradition of socially engaged poetry by creating venues for poetry as a voice against war, tyranny and oppression.

GOOD NEWS!

The Poets Against War archive will be permanently housed at Ohio State University. We will also get some much-needed and long overdue technical support.

While this does not alleviate our need for some immediate contributions, it does mean that our huge archive (20,000+ poems along with articles, essays and op/ed pieces) will remain available to all, a permanent record of a time when American poets "spoke for the conscience of our country." A print copy of the mss would stand over 10 feet tall.

But with the war now expanded into Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen, 100,000 troops still in Iraq, saber-rattling in the face of Iran and continued support for Israeli aggression, including the use of phosphorus-based weapons on civilian targets, we clearly have much to do at Poets Against War. Please pass the word and help reactivate and motivate our membership now that our enormous technical problems will be overcome fairly soon. And don't forget to make a modest donation. Significant changes are in the works. Be a part of the solution.

Namaste,

Sam Hamill

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:

ratical.org

Born in Sherqat, the first ancient city built by the Assyrians, Safaa Sheikh Hamad is an Iraqi essayist and translator currently situated in India. His home town was extensively ravished during the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 and still bears the aftermath of the war. He wrote this poem in English

Thus sang the troubadour

Coming from behind the sea of Atlas

Ships laden with cargoes of death

Hearts full of purulence

Minds that never cared about a soul

Led by the new Agamemnon

To smash Troy that never kidnapped Helen

Joy has been stripped off

Sadness hovered over the place

The vigilant watchman is sleeping with a whore

To live or to die is the same

For they both lost a meaning

The mad man in our village could not answer

Why we had to commit suicide

And give a cold shoulder to the godless heaven

Arabs of bad blood gave Agamemnon the sands

Ferdinand de Lesseps resurrected again

Had a toast of champagne with the new Pasha

Waved for the scum of the earth

Crossing Suez canal to the desert of Arabia

Sheikhs of Arabia drinking mugs of espresso

Whispered in each other`s ears the news from Cheney

Had a few words with the devil`s advocate

And decided to say “NO” while their “YES” had already pushed the button

The rains in Kirkuk washed the gloom of the earth

But rainbow never showed up

For the red prevailed

It is war , carrying an obsession of mongers

Many men will die, sang the troubadour,

Arabs

Kurds

Torkomans

Many men will die 　 　 　

March was an eye witness

And its nineteenth was the first to burn.

My little sister woke up in the early morning

She said Mrs. Mallaby of the yesterday's bedtime story

Met her in a dream and was all alone

In her hundredth birthday,

There was no post card

No birthday cake with hundred candles

No umbrella for the rainy Sundays

No kitten mewed at her door.

March was an eye witness

And its nineteenth was the first to burn.

Apache

Cluster bombs

Scud missiles

White phosphorous

Were all death retailers in Mesopotamia

The little Umm Qasr under the flame

Reminded us of Leningrad

Sweeping the young dead bodies with a broom

Making heaps of souls

Preparing a meal for the ravens

Shock and Awe quaked the earth

Buttons unleashed death into the eyes

That is enough, said my friend and shut the radio off,

Tell them, I said to him

Tell them we had enough

Death

Shock

Awe

Tell them the Tigris had enough bodies of assassinated dreams

Euphrates vomited the sense of clarity

Shatt-al-Arab wept the death of the palm trees

The Gulf engulfed all the bitterness

Hugged the two rivers

Buried the bodies of the dead

Washed their blood off the salty beaches

And listened to the troubadour

Who was still singing,

Many men will die.

Many men will die.

March was an eye witness,

And its nineteenth was the first to burn. 　 　 　

Pune 22/03/10

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.

Martin Espada’s poem, written several years ago, seems especially fitting as a eulogy:

Martín Espada

Stone Hammered to Gravel
             For poet Dennis Brutus, at eighty

The office workers did not know, plodding through 1963
a nd Marshall Square station in Johannesburg,
that you would dart down the street between them, thinking the police would never fire into the crowd. Sargeant Kleingeld did not know, as you escaped
his fumbling hands and the pistol on his hip,
that he would one day be a footnote in the book of your life.

Read the rest of the poem

Short History of Poets Against War

In late January 2003, in response to an invitation to a symposium by Laura Bush to celebrate "Poetry and the American Voice," Sam Hamill declined; a longtime pacifist, he could not in good faith visit the White House following the recent news of George W. Bush's plan for a unilateral "Shock and Awe" attack on Iraq. Instead, he asked about 50 fellow poets to "reconstitute a Poets Against the War movement like the one organized to speak out against the war in Vietnam...to speak up for the conscience of our country and lend your names to our petition against this war” by submitting poems of protest that he would send to the White House. When 1,500 poets responded within four days, this web site was created as a means of handling the enormous, unexpected response.

Since then, the "accidental groundswell" grew to include poets from around the world. There are presently more than 20,000 poems in this, the largest poetry anthology ever published. Poems from Poets Against War have been presented in person, by invitation, to several representatives of the U.S. Congress; many of them have since been introduced into the Congressional Record.