to Laura Bush:"I could not face the idea of breaking bread with you"

[dajoki]

letter from poet Sharon Olds after being invited to White House by Mrs. Bush. please click link and read entire letter, it's well worth it.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

The Nationhttp://www.thenation.com/doc/20051010/olds
posted September 19, 2005 (October 10, 2005 issue)


No Place for a Poet at a Banquet of Shame
Sharon Olds


For reasons spelled out below, the poet Sharon Olds has declined to attend the National Book Festival in Washington, which, coincidentally or not, takes place September 24, the day of an antiwar mobilization in the capital. Olds, winner of a National Book Critics Circle Award and professor of creative writing at New York University, was invited along with a number of other writers by First Lady Laura Bush to read from their works. Three years ago artist Jules Feiffer declined to attend the festival's White House breakfast as a protest against the Iraq War ("Mr. Feiffer Regrets," November 11, 2002). We suggest that invitees to this year's event consider following their example. --The Editors


Laura Bush
First Lady
The White House

Dear Mrs. Bush,

<<snip>>

I tried to see my way clear to attend the festival in order to bear witness--as an American who loves her country and its principles and its writing--against this undeclared and devastating war.

But I could not face the idea of breaking bread with you. I knew that if I sat down to eat with you, it would feel to me as if I were condoning what I see to be the wild, highhanded actions of the Bush Administration.

What kept coming to the fore of my mind was that I would be taking food from the hand of the First Lady who represents the Administration that unleashed this war and that wills its continuation, even to the extent of permitting "extraordinary rendition": flying people to other countries where they will be tortured for us.

So many Americans who had felt pride in our country now feel anguish and shame, for the current regime of blood, wounds and fire. I thought of the clean linens at your table, the shining knives and the flames of the candles, and I could not stomach it.

Sincerely,

SHARON OLDS

[goclark]

1. Bravo Sharon Olds!

[ptolle]

3. indeed, hear, hear

But you know the frightwingshriekers are scouring the countryside for blueprints for a gibbet.It's probably a good thing poets are relatively obscure in our benighted society for you know this high disrespect cannot go unpunished.I will, however, make a point of looking up her work and maybe adding a volume or two to my library.

[calimary]

39. YOWZA for her, AND for you, ptolle! Welcome to DU!

I think she may have won herself more fans, and well-deserved, too, I might add!

A BEAUTIFULLY-WORDED closing set of remarks. Just gorgeous!!!

Glad you're here to savor it with us!

Now help us

Visualize IMPEACHMENT!!!!!!!!!!
And then go DO something to get george and laura OUT of OUR White House!!!

[Supersedeas]

22. ovations...ovations

[rurallib]

2. So when will we see this reported in the MSM?

Bravo Sharon Olds. It takes guts to stand up.

[dajoki]

6. NEVER!! n/t

[Patchuli]

4. "I can't stomach it!"

I love it! She was so eloquent and slapped Pickles a good one at the same time!

[bliss_eternal]

5. We should send this woman flowers

and thank her for taking this stand. Bravo, Ms. Olds!

:applause:

[dajoki]

7. that is a good idea n/t

[dajoki]

10. thanks for list...

and i think it's more about principles than politics.

[Call me Deacon Blues]

8. Here is a list of the attending authors:

Normally I would say to forget about politics, this is about literature, but you know what? It's all about politics these days.

Kim Addonizio
Buzz Aldrin
David Baldacci
Nevada Barr
Harry Bliss
David Brooks
Sandra Brown
Meg Cabot
Andrew Carroll
Robert L. Carter
Lynne Cheney
Sharon Creech
Doreen Cronin
Jeffery Deaver
Giada De Laurentiis
Myrka Dellanos
Marisa de los Santos
Fernando Divina
Marlene Divina
E. L. Doctorow
Joseph Ellis
Richard Paul Evans
John Feinstein
Jonathan Safran Foer
Thomas Friedman
Alice Fulton
Diana Gabaldon
Neil Gaiman
Jack Gantos
Leeza Gibbons
Patricia Reilly Giff
Dana Gioia
Stephanie Glakas-Tenet
Martha Grimes
Donald Hall
Rupert Holmes
Andrew Hudgins
Kay Bailey Hutchison
John Irving
Gish Jen
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Dolores Kendrick
Sue Monk Kidd
Bob Kinkead
David Kirby
Hilary Knight
Laura Lippman
Letters About Literature
Robert MacNeil
Chris Madden
George R. R. Martin
Bobbie Ann Mason
David McCullough
Samuel Menashe
Wendell Minor
Andrea Mitchell
Pat Mora
Marcia Muller
Walter Dean Myers
Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
NBA & WNBA
Laura Numeroff
Mary Pope Osborne
Will Osborne
Linda Sue Park
Dave Pelzer
Gloria Jean Pinkney
Jerry Pinkney
Sandra Pinkney
Steven V. Roberts
René Saldaña
Mary Jo Salter
John Sandford
Karin Slaughter
Laurie Smith
A.E. Stallings
R.L. Stine
Julie Sussman
David Tutera
Judith Warner
Christian Wiman
Tom Wolfe
Al Young

[dajoki]

11. thanks for list post was for you

[bliss_eternal]

14. Why does Lynne Cheney even bother?

As if they care if she shows up? They've made it quite clear how they feel about her...

It will be interesting to see if any others, just don't show up.

What's up with Leeza Gibbons on the list?

:shrug:

[satya]

20. Do you think Doctorow will read from The Unfeeling President?

I fault this president for not knowing what death is. He does not suffer the death of our 21-year-olds who wanted to be what they could be. On the eve of D-Day in 1944 General Eisenhower prayed to God for the lives of the young soldiers he knew were going to die. He knew what death was. Even in a justifiable war, a war not of choice but of necessity, a war of survival, the cost was almost more than Eisenhower could bear.

But this president does not know what death is. He hasn't the mind for it. You see him joking with the press, peering under the table for the weapons of mass destruction he can't seem to find, you see him at rallies strutting up to the stage in shirt sleeves to the roar of the carefully screened crowd, smiling and waving, triumphal, a he-man.

He does not mourn. He doesn't understand why he should mourn. He is satisfied during the course of a speech written for him to look solemn for a moment and speak of the brave young Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.

But you study him, you look into his eyes and know he dissembles an emotion which he does not feel in the depths of his being because he has no capacity for it. He does not feel a personal responsibility for the 1,000 dead young men and women who wanted to be what they could be.

more...

[dajoki]

38. that would be interesting n/t

[calimary]

40. E.L. Doctorow is going? Hmmm.

I was going to say I might be tempted to go, mainly for the opportunity to make some people wonder what happened to the official gwb portrait...

:evilgrin:

But then again, I don't think the First Dog Dropper has one yet. I don't think it's formally presented to the White House collection until we're into the next person's term.

[dajoki]

47. are you on the list? n/t

[NJCher]

49. so much for backbone

Sharon Olds is obviously the only one with a conscience among them. I am appalled and ashamed that the above writers would lend the bush administration any legitimacy by attending this affair.




Cher

[dajoki]

51. i'm with you...

we gardeners must stick together.

[texanshatingbush]

9. You think Pickles understands she's not coming! n/t

[dajoki]

19. i think she is as clueless as her husband n/t

[kitkat65]

12. Rather than jam Olds e-mail with praise and appreciation

I hope someone sends her this way so she can read it all here.

You rock, woman! And, I'm speechless, absolutely speechless.

[bliss_eternal]

13. Good idea! Anyone volunteer to send her a link or

we could send her flowers!!

[dajoki]

17. yes we could!! n/t

[dajoki]

18. short bio

The Steven Barclay Agency
12 Western Avenue
Petaluma, CA 94952
Phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
Website: www.barclayagency.com
Exclusive representation for speaking engagements

Sharon Olds ~ Award-winning Poet



Sharon Olds is the author of eight volumes of poetry. Her poetry, says Michael Ondaatje, is “pure fire in the hands,” and David Leavitt in the Voice Literary Supplement describes her work as “remarkable for its candor, its eroticism, and its power to move.” With sensuality, humor, sprung rhythm, and remarkable imagery, she expresses truths about domestic and political violence, sexuality, family relationships, love, and the body. Often compared to “confessional” poets, she has been much praised for the courage, emotional power, and extraordinary physicality of her work. A reviewer for The New York Times hailed her poetry for its vision: “Like Whitman, Ms. Olds sings the body in celebration of a power stronger than political oppression.”

Born in San Francisco, Sharon Olds studied at Stanford University and Columbia University. Her numerous honors include a National Endowment for the Arts grant; a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship; the San Francisco Poetry Center Award for her first collection, Satan Says (1980); and the Lamont Poetry Selection and the National Book Critics Circle Award for The Dead & the Living (1983). Her other books of poetry are Strike Sparks: Selected Poems 1980-2002 (2004), Blood, Tin, Straw (1999), The Gold Cell (1997), The Wellspring (1995), and The Father (1992). Her poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Poetry, The Atlantic Monthly, and Ploughshares. Named New York State Poet Laureate (1998 – 2000), Olds teaches graduate poetry workshops at New York University and helps run a workshop at a 900-bed state hospital for the severely disabled. She lives in New York City.

[MsUnderstood]

34. Flowers?!? Did you read the letter?

Don't send her flowers, buy her books!

[Dr Fate]

15. Arrrgg. The wench is a brave siren.

Lucky we are to have her aboard our vessel!!

ARRRRGGG!!!

[dajoki]

52. she has guts and principles n/t

[realFedUp]

16. I wish there were more who turned down Bush invitations...nt

[BlueIris]

21. As someone who has read everything Olds has ever published...

WHY DID THEY EVEN BOTHER????

To READ from their works? WTF? Have the idiots who filled out the invites ever read ANYTHING Olds has written???!!!! My mind has been boggling all day over this. FOR GOD'S SAKE. The woman marched on Washington the LAST TIME liberals did it to oppose a war; she participated in many protest rallies at Columbia while studying there during Vietnam; she has written countless poems extolling the virtues and power of unhibited adult sexuality; she's written works which criticized nuclear proliferation and the arms race, oppression of women and oppression of freedom. I am CRACKING up picturing Olds reading ANYTHING from any of her works to that audience. I'm also cracking up picturing Laura Bush actually reading anything written by Sharon Olds. In addition to the fact that many of Olds' poems contain beautiful, brilliant but GRAPHIC descriptions of countless sexual encounters and other physical experiences--Olds is really, well, intelligent. I thought seriously about writing my senior thesis on her in college. Her work is among the most sophisticated of any modern poet I've studied. I don't think Laura's an idiot or anything, but I do feel that Olds' is probably beyond her.

[janx]

23. This is not the first time something like that has happened.

And it's not the first time a major poet has declined a WH invitation. They keep inviting major poets and writers to the WH, and the writers decline. A few years ago, a group of them declined at once. And no, it would seem that nobody reads the works of these people before inviting them.

It's all just politics.

Laura Bush is a debutante who married a career politician. Sharon Olds is an artist and a scholar. You're certainly right. They wouldn't likely connect...

[dajoki]

29. like i said before...

i think it's principles not politics for sharon olds.

[dajoki]

28. i did a little...

research on Ms. Olds, and it does seem like an odd invite.

[welshTerrier2]

24. the REAL reason she wouldn't go to the book festival is that ...

she probably couldn't think of enough words to rhyme with "indictments" ... maybe you could help me finish this and we could send it to her kind of as a starter kit ...

Up in Plames, A Cowboy's Lament

the WH is facing indictments
we just can't contain our excitement

although bush doesn't look very frightened
he's never been all that enlightened

[dajoki]

27. we have a poet ...

right here. maybe next year you could turn down the invite. (i like your work)

[Skittles]

25. this is a woman of class and integrity

*WELL DONE MS. OLDS* :thumbsup:

[welshTerrier2]

26. "Mr. Feiffer Regrets ..."

here is an extract of Feiffer's letter that was referenced in the article:

source: http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20021111&s=feiffer

But I find it unbearably ironic that, while the uses of language are celebrated by you and your renowned guests, elsewhere in the White House language is being traduced and transformed to nudge us into war.

There are honest arguments on both sides of the Iraq debate (such as it is), but it seems necessary on the occasion of a celebration of reading to press the point that words, at their finest, don't set out to confuse or obscure. Their aim is to clarify.

But clarity is not what we're getting from your husband's White House. It seems that clarity would deny him a war.

I am a father and a grandfather. As every parent knows, most children can intuit whether the stories their parents tell them are true or if they're making them up.

The American people are able to tell too.

[sepia_steel]

30. backbones are beautiful!! n/t

[rateyes]

31. I love it when people with REAL principles...

stand up to people who only pretend to have real principles. Thanks, Ms. Olds.

[dajoki]

37. that's right, it's principles...

some say it's politics, i disagree.

[jillan]

32. My thank you to her, was emailing the article to Keith!

Could be great little piece on his "Soundbite of the Day"?

[dajoki]

33. good thinking...

hope he uses it.

[NYCGirl]

35. He's on vacation this week. NT

[dajoki]

36. shit!! n/t

[CatWoman]

41. send it to Jon Stewart, then

[dajoki]

50. done n/t

[MarvinBarns]

42. Right Wing Religious Nuts

How can you fool them today? Mrs. Bush and her husband only want to unleash war on anyone that gets in their way. Bravo for the Poet.

[Seansky]

43. Would love to have seen Laura's face.

[dajoki]

48. i would love to see pickles face...

if Ms. Olds read some of her poetry. http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/olds.html

[Nothing Without Hope]

44. PARALLEL THREAD ON THIS STORY:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2100952
thread title: No Place for a Poet at a Banquet of Shame: Poet declines WH invite

[indepat]

45. Shocking the number who stomach this and all the rest every day

[faithnotgreed]

46. beautiful - thank you sharon olds

[Lifelong Protester]

53. Thanks for the post and list. I am disappointed to see..

David McCullough is on the list! He was just testifying to Congress about how NCLB was pushing the arts and history into a dusty corner! Shame on him! He should refuse to go too.

I will be a new reader of Sharon Olds.

[dajoki]

54. i think she found...

quite a few new readers. i will be buying one of her books of poetry.