Poetry Readers Challenge discussion

Poets Against the War, edited by Sam Hamill
Thunder's Mouth Press/Nation Books, New York, 2003.

Compiled the same year that the U.S. war on Iraq began, Poets Against the War began as a call for poetry to the nation, due to Laura Bush (first lady at the time) cancelling a White House poetry event because of rumors that poets were going to read political poetry.

Not sure what Bush was expecting from poets. Maybe she was unfamiliar with poetry and was just trying to be supportive of the arts. But what initially backfired became a great project. The resulting book is a collection of approximately 150 poets' anti-war work (occasionally accompanied by a statement of conscious, and in a couple cases a poet ONLY provides such a statement). The quality and styles vary. The youngest poet is only 8 years old, and while it's obviously a kid's poem, it shows that wonderful depth of thought that often goes into poetry-making:

Untitled
by Alexandra Indira Sanyal

Snow so fluffy and soft.
I like to run and jump into it.
It leads to peace and love.
Snow stops war
and fights
that lead to killing.
So snow come today.

There are big names (Adrienne Rich, Julia Alvarez, Joy Harjo, W.S. Merwin, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and others, and a statement of conscience by Robert Pinsky) and completely unfamiliar names, mingled together in an egalitarian alphabetical-order layout. There's a lot of free verse, but also experimental and form poems. Ultimately, I liked the vast majority of the poems in this book, both the overtly political (the wondrous "Cambridge Rant" by William Irwin Thompson) and quietly sad. For the latter, I share with you this one:

Victory Gardens
by Nancy Willard

We planted our garden small.
After dinner my mother and I

tidied the beans, watching the apples fall,
while the radio, hid in a melon pile,

counted the deaths in trenches and fields.
The corn, tall as my brother, whose smile

I can hardly remember, pushed out green hands
to my mother like awaited friends.

When he died, she hid in the tall sheaves.
They too were cut down, a battalion

of comforters, yet the next year the leaves
came again. How do such things survive?

cried my mother. We ploughed our grief
under the stubble alive

and tried to imagine that field in France,
very yellow and empty now, the stalks

of wheat pushing quietly out of the earth,
those witnesses and quiet conquerors.

The 150 poems included in Poets Against the War were selected out of 11,000 submissions. It may be a personal pleasure, but poetry brings people together. One of the benefits of themed anthologies is illuminating that for us. I earmarked the heck out of this book. So yes, I recommend it. 5/5

Thanks for this. Apologies for my slowness -- it should be a 2020 review, but I didn't create the topic until this morning. Feel free to repost if you like.
I do like the voice of the child's poem (and we're having a little snow in Germany this morning). I guess it's no surprise that real peace remains elusive.
It's interesting that poets had to submit -- did Adrienne Rich and WS Merwin really have to submit? Nice to see so many submissions nevertheless.
Happy new year
Sarah

The introduction to the volume doesn't really specify if the famous poets had to submit...I believe a general invitation went out to the world of poets, so maybe they were invited directly as well.

I will repost this in 2020 reviews, even though I finished reading the book on New Years Eve of 2019. I wrote the review on the first of January :)