Sharon Olds

For those eager to know, my calf continues to make slow improvement.  Last Friday, the doctor of Oriental Medicine whom I visited asked me, "Do you want to be completely better within two weeks, or do you want this to become a chronic problem?"  Obviously, I chose the former option.  "Fine, he said; don't run until I tell you you can.  Even when it starts to feel better, wait until you are completely pain-free."  (This was before we launched into the "Qi Gong" and "Twee Na" treatments, which were very interesting.)

I've amazed myself by heeding his advice so far.   The only cardio exercise I've had is swimming, and only with the breast stroke.  I'm not allowed to move my legs as one does with the crawl, so it's one lap after another with the same frog kick.  I've been able, more so than in the past, to quiet my own anxiety about losing fitness.  Perhaps as I get older, my addictiveness is getting less intense?

One of my favorite American poets (who has had three of her poems up on my "Thursday Short Poem") is Berkeley's own Sharon Olds.  (Here is her most famous poem).  She is one of the few poets of whom I can say, with some confidence, that I have read the entire body of her published work.

Sharon Olds has a remarkable letter in the Nation this week.  It's not to the editor, but to First Lady Laura Bush, who had invited Olds (along with many other prominent poets) to read at this weekend's National Book Festival in Washington DC.  The First Lady, a long-time lover of poetry, will be hosting a breakfast at the White House for various writers.  In the letter, Olds explains why it is she won't be attending either the breakfast or the Book Festival. 

I am writing to let you know why I am not able to accept your kind invitation to give a presentation at the National Book Festival on September 24, or to attend your dinner at the Library of Congress or the breakfast at the White House.

Olds gives her reasons:

I tried to see my way clear to attend the festival in order to bear witness--as an American who loves her country and its principles and its writing--against this undeclared and devastating war.

But I could not face the idea of breaking bread with you. I knew that if I sat down to eat with you, it would feel to me as if I were condoning what I see to be the wild, highhanded actions of the Bush Administration.

What kept coming to the fore of my mind was that I would be taking food from the hand of the First Lady who represents the Administration that unleashed this war and that wills its continuation, even to the extent of permitting "extraordinary rendition": flying people to other countries where they will be tortured for us.

So many Americans who had felt pride in our country now feel anguish and shame, for the current regime of blood, wounds and fire. I thought of the clean linens at your table, the shining knives and the flames of the candles, and I could not stomach it.

The imagery in her last paragraph (blood, wounds, and fire juxtaposed with linens, knives, and candles) is a bit embarrassing, honestly.  I'm enough of a fan of her work to know she usually does much, much better than that.  No one writes about the human body, its pleasures and its weaknesses, as well as Olds does.

I've always loved poetry and poets.  I've also known that for centuries, poets have mixed politics with their art.  I believe, wholeheartedly, that one of the jobs of the poet is to speak prophetically about the "great issues."  Verse has access to phrases and constructs and images that are unavailable to even the most articulate and eloquent master of prose.  Poets not only can, but should be willing to use their gifts to remind the powerful of their obligations to the vulnerable.  Sometimes, indeed, often, poets must get angry, and channel that anger into their work.  I was raised on folk music and anti-war poetry (some good, some not so good.)  I can still recite the last section of Wilfred Owen's Dulce et decorum est, which I memorized in high school, and brought myself to tears of high and self-righteous emotion while doing so.

Like Olds, I am opposed to this war in Iraq.  But oh, how I wish she would go to the White House this weekend!  No, I don't want her to go out of politeness.   (Sometimes, I realize, I'm a big stickler for the outer forms of politesse, even when it trumps principle; I once had a very friendly lunch with an avowed racist member of the National Vanguard, just to prove that I could be civil to anyone.)  Rather, I want her to go because I do want her poems, in all of their earthy, outrageous, political splendor, read aloud in the presence of Mrs. Bush and within the confines of the White House.  The poet's job is to speak truth to power; to my mind, truth is never as effective as when it comes dressed in the rhythms of the poet.  I don't say this because I think Olds should go to make Laura Bush squirm; I think she should go to remind everyone that even when a poet breaks bread with the king (or the first lady), the obligation of the poet to speak the truth survives.

I disagree with Olds that sitting down with Laura Bush would be condoning the actions of her husband's government.   Though the First Lady is a representative of the Administration, she has her own agency and her own agenda; poetry is her passion, not the president's.  (Unless old Dubya has been really holding out on us, I don't think he falls asleep reciting Yeats or Auden or even Rod McKuen.)  Furthermore, because Laura Bush has shown an unprecedented interest in the literary arts, poets like Olds now have an opportunity to reach a far wider audience than ever before -- an opportunity that Olds is, I think, squandering.  (Though not entirely; making her letter to the First Lady public in the pages of the Nation guarantees her approbation and perhaps increased popularity on the left.)

If I were Olds, I would eat and drink with Laura Bush on Saturday, perhaps exchanging warm and witty words about our favorite poems and poets; when the time came for me to read from my own work, I would let my poem speak for me -- and I would make darned sure that every syllable cried out for justice and for peace.   The poem itself would be the vehicle of righteous anger, even as I chatted politely with the wife of the target of that rage.  That's not hypocrisy.  That's seeing the poet's role for what it is.

Of course, I'll be the first to admit that I love verse more than I love any one political position.  Like Yeats, I believe the eloquent and the talented will, in due course, be forgiven their excesses, even in the service of what turn out to be disastrous causes.    Though he deleted these stanzas from later versions of this poem, my beloved Auden was right on the money here:

Time that is intolerant
Of the brave and the innocent,
And indifferent in a week
To a beautiful physique,

Worships language and forgives
Everyone by whom it lives;
Pardons cowardice, conceit,
Lays its honours at their feet.

Time that with this strange excuse
Pardoned Kipling and his views,
And will pardon Paul Claudel,
Pardons him for writing well.

(Claudel supported the Fascists in the Spanish Civil War, and rejoiced when the Nazis took France in 1940).

Those who write beautifully and well can be excused many things, and in my mind, so can those who, like Laura Bush, are earnest patrons of the poet.  Sharon Olds is no Paul Claudel.  She's a better poet, and her politics are better  But though her legacy in American letters is secure, I do wish that she would reconsider her opportunity to eat and drink with the First Lady, and give the assembled throngs an opportunity to hear the pure, elegant, and viscerally powerful message that her poetry always conveys.

Comments

[The Gonzman]

Hmm. More to the point, I'd think, is the question, "Would a certain Jewish carpenter break bread with Laura Bush?"

[Ahistoricality]

I agree, Hugo.

Ms. Olds is not simply responding to the invitation: she is constructing it in such a way as to make her refusal meaningful. Insofar as Laura Bush is a "representative" of the administration, she has never been a representative of the defense, economic or diplomatic policies which Ms. Olds (correctly, in my view) deplores. To avoid hypocrisy, Ms. Olds would have to forego more than just a lunch invitation: there's a great deal that the federal government, even under this atrocity of an administration, does for good.

And the opportunity, as you say, to speak the same truths that she presents in her letter at (or, more likely, to press, etc. before and after) a White House Event would be a more powerful statement of true civil discourse.

[Hugo]

Good words, A; I liked this bit at your space:

"We must openly disagree if we are to discover what binds us together and what we can accomplish. We must talk to each other in order to disagree. We must speak honestly as well as decently, which means that we may sometimes need to say unpleasant things about each other."

[kate]

I think it's interesting that you say "the poet's job is to speak truth to power." I like the idea of speaking truth to power, I'm just not sure it's the poet's job. I thought about proposing that it's the poet's job to speak truth, but even that I find hard to fully defend! It's hard to pin requirements on a poet, right? They are required to speak, I suppose, otherwise they would not be poets, but beyond that....I don't know.

This whole scenario also reminds me of that episode of The West Wing with Laura Dern, where she wants to criticize the administration at a White House dinner. That isn't really relevant to anything, but the similarities are just pretty striking :)

[Saul Isler]

Sharon:
As much as I agree with your reasons for boycotting Laura Bush's little book bash in DC, I think you're blowing an excellent opportunity to deliver your salient message to her and the rest of the country in person. Incidentally, she's not to be blamed for the travesty of this war, it's the idiot she married.
Instead of boycotting the event, your speaking your piece to her face would serve not as a mere boycott but a "March on Washington." What you can DO would have more impact than what you refuse to do. Please reconsider your choice.

[L.Y.]

I'd like to think Olds reading at the White House in a spirit of Christiaan generosity would have had an impact. but poetry has been read to Mrs. Bush before. Nothing changed. Olds got more attention for her cause and drew more readers to her poetry with her letter than she could have at the festival. Mrs. Bush has been a charming mouthpiece for and defender of her husband's policies all along and so she is fair game. While she is a genuine book lover, she has also used literature to put a nice PR polish on the White House and the presidency. Was it rude of Olds? A bit, but nothing compared to the rudeness of her husband's presidency: torture, sexual humiliation, cutting vet benefits, insulting anti-war mothers of dead soldiers, swift-boating war vets, fiddling while new orleans drowns, favoring wealthy cronies over much more qualified people, and so on. Maybe I'm missing something, but I think that's rude. Olds expressed the welling anger in a lot of people.

That said, one has to respect those writers who put aside their political views, which required superhuman effort in some cases, went to the White House and spoke their truth there. We can have it both ways, so people are free to protest that which they have every right to be angry about, and also free to put those things aside in the ecumenical spirit of booklovers everywhere.