At 11:58 am 11/9/01 -0400, Richard Dillon wrote:
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>But the poetry community has been attacking this President since he
>got started.
>_100 Days_ was its preeminent attack.
>
>Poetry, now, operates in current history. Unlike Blake, many current
>poets stand, it seems, with the enemies of the United States.
>
>I await the moment with the writers in _100 Days_ declare their
>allegiance with Bin Lauden. It would be an honest thing to do.
>
As someone currently cut off by phone from a friend in DC, able only to
wait for the cross-Atlantic phone lines to start working again, and also as
a friend of the editors of 100 Days, I find it unfortunate that while I
cannot phone my friend to find out whether he is safe, this kind of idiotic
filth could make it across the same communication lines. The war-mongering
leaders of the US and my own government have bombed civilians in Iraq, the
Sudan and elsewhere: this is no justification for the loss of civilian life
in the US presently, just as the actions of Bin Laden could never justify
our _illegal_ attacks. And no, no-one has to claim allegiance with Bin
Laden to feel outrage at US/UK policy, that is so outrageously simplistic
that my day's research in the library on America in the McCarthyite 1950s
is brought suddenly and frighteningly into focus.
yours in anger,
Malcolm Phillips
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