D.C. Poets Against the War: An Anthology

by Sarah Browning (Editor)

After two sold-out printings of the first chapbook edition, the D.C. Poets Against the War decided to release an expanded, perfect bound paperback edition to include additional voices of protest over the continuing war in Iraq.

Genres: Poetry

128 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2003

About the author

Sarah Browning is co-founder and for 10 years was Executive Director of Split This Rock. She is the author of Killing Summer (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2017), Whiskey in the Garden of Eden (The Word Works, 2007), and co-editor of D.C. Poets Against the War: An Anthology (Argonne House Press, 2004). The recipient of artist fellowships from the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities, she has also received a Creative Communities Initiative grant and the People Before Profits Poetry Prize. Browning has worked as a community organizer in Boston public housing and as a political organizer for reproductive rights, gay rights, and electoral reform, and against poverty, South African apartheid, and U.S. militarism. She was founding director of Amherst Writers & Artists Institute — creative writing workshops for low-income women and youth — and Assistant Director of The Fund for Women Artists, an organization supporting socially engaged art by women. She has written essays and interviewed poets and artists for a variety of publications.

Reviews

[Jennifer Collins · Rating 5 out of 5]

The varied voices in this collection come together to form a patchwork of protest that still rings as engaging, worthwhile, and striking. Though the moment in history that prompted the collection has passed--though perhaps it could be argued that it's been reinvented more recently--the majority of the poems only work from that moment, focusing instead on larger questions of war and piece, silence and witness, and privilege. The essays at the beginning and the end of the book are fairly dated, but shouldn't be taken as a signal to what's in the poetry. All in all, the collection as a whole is powerful and accessible, and worth not just reading, but sharing.

Absolutely recommended.

[Tom Romig · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sad to read this now, some 13 years after it was published, 13 years since the invasion of Iraq. The poets who contributed to the volume, like the millions and millions of others around the world who protested that invasion, speak passionately about the injustice of that invasion, of the duplicity that precipitated its launch, of the inevitability of immense suffering to follow. And after 13 years, no one is held accountable for the ongoing devastation.

Of special note is the work of the editor, Sarah Browning, who also contributed a poem to the anthology. For decades she has been a stalwart advocate for peace. I was fortunate to hear Ms. Browning's moving and thoughtful introduction to the recent poetry reading by Sharon Olds at the Folger.