The power of poetry: Poet Sharon Olds Declines White House Invitation

This is an open letter from the poet Sharon Olds to Laura Bush decliningthe invitation to read and speak at the the National Book Festival in Washington, DC.Sharon Olds is one of the most widely read and critically acclaimed poets living in America today. Read to the end of the letter to experience her restrained, chilling eloquence.
"Dear Mrs. Bush,
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.In one way, it's a very appealing invitation. The idea of speaking at a festival attended by 85,000 people is inspiring! The possibility of finding new readers is exciting for a poet in personal terms, and in terms of the desire that poetry serve its constituents--all of us who need the pleasure,and the inner and outer news, it delivers. And the concept of a communityof readers and writers has long been dear to my heart. As a professor of creative writing in the graduate school of a major university, I have had the chance to be a part of some magnificent outreach writing workshops in which our students have become teachers. Over the years, they have taught in a variety of settings: a women's prison, several New York City public high schools, an oncology ward for children. Our initial program, at a 900-bed state hospital for the severely physically challenged, has been running now for twenty years, creating along the way lasting friendships between young MFA candidates and their students--long-term residents at the hospital who, in their humor, courage and wisdom,become our teachers.When you have witnessed someone non-speaking and almost non-moving spellout, with a toe, on a big plastic alphabet chart, letter by letter, his new poem, you have experienced, close up, the passion and essentialness of writing.When you have held up a small cardboard alphabet card for a writer who is completely non-speaking and non-moving (except for the eyes), and pointed first to the A, then the B, then C, then D, until you get to the first letter of the first word of the first line of the poem she has been composing in her head all week, and she lifts her eyes when that letter is touched to say yes, you feel with a fresh immediacy the human drive for creation, self-expression, accuracy, honesty and wit--and the importance of writing, which celebrates the value of each person's unique story and song. So the prospect of a festival of books seemed wonderful to me. I thought of the opportunity to talk about how to start up an outreach program. I thought of the chance to sell some books, sign some books and meet some of the citizens of Washington, DC. I thought that I could try to find a way, even as your guest, with respect, to speak about my deep feeling that we should not have invaded Iraq, and to declare my belief that the wish to invade another culture and another country--with the resultant loss of life and limb for our brave soldiers, and for the noncombatants in their home terrain--did not come out of our democracy but was instead a decision made "at the top" and forced on the people by distorted language, and by untruths. I hoped to express the fear that we have begun to live in the shadows of tyranny and religious chauvinism--the opposites of the liberty, tolerance and diversity our nation aspires to. 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.
Sincerely,SHARON OLDS"

This exchange was forwarded to the original sender by the famed American opera singer, Marilyn Horne, who had also turned down a similar invitation some time ago, as follows:"Brava! I did not write a letter when I was asked a few yrs. ago to sing for the Christmas Tree lighting at the White House. I refused, but did not go public about it. I just could not be seen as supporting this regime. It was the first term, too......." MARILYN HORNE

Why I Write

Kim Stafford writes, "Life is a universe of fragments yearning for coherence." And this is why I write, for synthesis, wholeness. I write to understand the fragments of my sadness, like individual cello notes longing for both the harmony and dissonance that create a concerto. I write because there is dew on the Canna and I miss you ~ yet I'm not really supposed to miss you and I don't understand. I write to make sense of why some people irritate more than delight me. I write to try to make sense of a senseless war, of hostile treatment of others, of differences in beliefs and the need to be right. I write from wonder.

Paint peels off the summer deck. What does it remind me of, teach me to re-member? Antique gray pushes through a fresh coat of green ~ indentations of the past converge with now in a message ~ a message of what? Planks of pine are filled with woody knots, whirls of trapped grains pooled together to create curves of intrigue, or are they bumps in an otherwise straight and narrow road. What layers of old are ready to peel from me this day, this weekend, this minute, starting yesterday? Paint chips, morning stillness, crimson honeysuckle and hummingbird busyness, blackberries in an orange bowl. And ease. I wonder.

These associations, oblique to cliche, can transform me if I choose to notice. If I listen to the universe outside of me, the large and the small of it, maybe I will begin to make sense of what churns within. Maybe I will begin to create my own whole constellation of random stars, asters from dis-asters, lucidity from these fragments of light. And wonder.