dublinka

To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric, wrote Adorno in a much understood contemplation of the role of poetry in a post holocaust world. In a similar vain, which will be equally misunderstood, I'd like to ask, can Americans with over 600,000 people now estimated dead in Iraq as a result of the war on terror, write poetry during this bloodshed? The naive answer to this, yes we are living in dark times, we poets must write on, we must, we have to, and besides we're doing all we can to help. But in fact the truth is darker. It's a matter of simple statistics. There is no earthly reason to think that all poets, when they vote at all, vote democrat. Many will have voted Republican. They will have, by their actions, if not in their poetry, actively chosen war. Can Americans write poetry with 600,000 dead, oh yes, without doubt. Of course these poets in a post Iraq reckoning, will be excised from the history books. The unpalatable does not tend to be remembered. It was Ginsberg and company who entered the pantheon after Vietnam, not such shadows who write, about beauty, truth, and being, on the wings of bombers over the deserts of blood. This war must stop. There is poetry in action too.