It's great to see the poetry corner alive and kicking.
I'd been sent that Sharon Olds letter as well, and while I don't personally agree with her stance (I refused to sign the now-famous "Poets Against The War" statement a few years ago when many American poets refused to attend Laura Bush's literary lunch) I think Olds certainly has a right to have made her decision.
Poets are citizens. We've got political points of view like everyone else. And the right to assert them.
that said, I don't think Olds' stance, or her sharing that letter on the internet, is going to do a damn thing about the war. It seems to be grandstanding (IMO!!) rather than anything else.
By the way, Shaon Olds is a highly-respected poet credited with writing fearlessly about sex, the family and the body. I'm not a great fan of her work (I prefer my poetry more musical) but thought I'd paste one of her poems:
The Borders
To say that she came into me,
from another world, is not true.
Nothing comes into the universe
and nothing leaves it.
My mother—I mean my daughter did not
enter me. She began to exist
inside me—she appeared within me.
And my mother did not enter me.
When she lay down, to pray, on me,
she was always ferociously courteous,
fastidious with Puritan fastidiousness,
but the barrier of my skin failed, the barrier of my
body fell, the barrier of my spirit.
She aroused and magnetized my skin, I wanted
ardently to please her, I would say to her
what she wanted to hear, as if I were hers.
I served her willingly, and then
became very much like her, fiercely
out for myself.
When my daughter was in me, I felt I had
a soul in me. But it was born with her.
But when she cried, one night, such pure crying,
I said I will take care of you, I will
put you first. I will not ever
have a daughter the way she had me,
I will not ever swim in you
the way my mother swam in me and I
felt myself swum in. I will never know anyone
again the way I knew my mother,
the gates of the human fallen.
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