Poets Dissent

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"The White House recently cancelled its symposium, Poetry and the American Voice, due to the first lady's anxiety that it was shaping into an anti-war forum," Rebecca Okrent writes for TomPaine.com. "Spokesperson Noelia Rodriguez explained that, 'While Mrs. Bush respects the right of all Americans to express their opinions, she, too, has opinions and believes it would be inappropriate to turn a literary event into a political forum.' In other words if you have a dissenting opinion, you can't come to the party." Unimpressed by the First Lady's fair-weather love of literature, Poets Against the War organized read-ins for peace across the country.