:)
i thought you would appreciate the acerbic wit of this fellow, dma..
thestranger.com
JUST SHUT UP
Nobody gives a shit what anti-war or pro-war writers think. Really. So shut up. That goes double for poets. Shut the hell up, poets. Everybody just shut up.
by Neal Pollack
In recent issues, patrons of this tawdry but readable newspaper have endured a long, shrill antiwar essay from Ted Rall and a short, grumpy pro-war essay from Christopher Hitchens. One would think that's enough war writing, in any publication, for any lifetime.
But last week, The Stranger's editor sent me an e-mail. In response to Hitchens and Rall, he wanted me to write something called, provisionally, "Who Cares?" Impossible, I said. The U.S. is about to unleash the biggest military assault of my lifetime, an action that could plunge the world into apocalyptic chaos. I do care, and I'd be an idiot if I didn't. I'm totally against the war 70 percent of the time, and then once in a while I think, well, the planet's already dying. Let war rip and see what happens.
At the same time, so what? Do you really want to hear what I think? Do you really want to hear what any writer thinks about our upcoming war with Iraq? I don't. Suddenly I had the idea for this piece, which officially begins now:
Shut up, antiwar people. Shut up, pro-war people. Shut down your computers and shut your goddamn pieholes. No one gives a shit what you write, so stop writing about the war. Shut up, all of you.
My annoyance has been stewing for a while. It peaked with the emergence of Poets Against the War, an overhyped coalition of usual suspects led by Seattle poet and small-press publisher Sam Hamill. Last week Mr. Hamill, with a maximum amount of self-righteous pomposity, staged readings across the country. My first reaction, upon hearing about the protest readings, was, "Oh, no. The poets are against the war. Whatever are we going to do?" But my flip, quote-marks-in-the-air reaction grew even less sincere and more ironic when I actually read some of the poetry. Select pieces are available on the Internet, in the e-book 100 Poets Against the War, now in a "third edition" because there have been so many submissions. Why, if you didn't know better, you'd almost think that thousands of poets were taking advantage of a political crisis to further their careers!
Let me provide a sample. This is the first stanza of "Living in bull's eye," a poem by Daniela Gioseffi. It's dedicated to "Arundhati Roy of India," as opposed to that other Arundhati Roy:
We live in ballistic bull's eyes of nuclear missiles.
Shall I flee New York, shall you flee New Delhi?
If we ran away, our friends, children we love, gardens
we've planted, birds we've watched at our windows,
neighbors we greet each morning,
homes arranged as we've wanted, books lining our shelves,
will be incinerated and who, what shall we love?
Who will welcome us home to be who we are?
That's a very good question, Ms. Gioseffi.
Now shut up. |
