Op-Ed By Sam Hamill
Director of Poets Against War

Welcome to this fledgling edition of the Poets Against War Newsletter. The newsletter will be posted quarterly, and will contain feature stories and op/ed pieces by a variety of poets.

Poetry is a large house with many rooms; it contains multitudes. The best any of us can do is to—as the old Chinese inscription advises—“look deeply, see clearly.” And practice our arts with devotion to craft and vision. Poets Against War is a house that stands strong because we stand together, putting other grievances and arguments aside in order to present a persuasive argument for nonviolence, for compassionate action—in order to speak as a conscience. In poetry, there is civilization. We each have our own cranes to fold. To continue reading click here

Writers-At-Large: Endangered Species

Writers-at-Large, an organization funded by a grant from the California Arts Council, dominates her focus these days. The objective of Writers-at-Large, Stahl says, “is to inform and educate in the spirit of bipartisanship. We aim to work with state legislators, as well as private industry, to show the correlation between the literary arts, or literacy, and higher standardized test scores. Writers and writing programs are as necessary to the health of the state and the education of our children as the air we breathe is to our survival.”
Read the complete interview

SEERS UNSEEN: THE POETS OF THE VIETNAM WAR

Martín Espada

There are neglected prophets among us, seers unseen. They have predicted one of the great cataclysms of our time, and their message has been shunned by all but a few. I'm referring to the poets of the Viet Nam war, particularly the veterans who returned home to this country, turned against that war, and have been writing about this revelation ever since. Read on

Order of The Great Vytautas Demeaned

Kerry Shawn Keys is an American poet who has been living in Lithuania since 1998. He wrote the following commentary for Respublika, a leading daily newspaper.

Some people seemed shocked by recent events in Uzbekistan, but anyone who has taken a little time to inform himself about the situation under President Islam Karimov's government should have expected the massacre of civilians by this brutal dictator who has been “morally” supported not just by the United States of America and Russia, but also by Lithuania.
Read the complete article.

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