Activists Take Poetic License at Poetry Foundation Event
The debate over the recent fracas at the Poetry Foundation is blowin’ up on the blogosphere, primarily centered here, and yes, there’s still time to weigh in.
It all sounds fairly ridiculous, but I have to lend a wee bit of sympathy to the poets and their spontaneous protest, though, to be sure, I’m not of the mind that PDA and stripping are brilliant, original, or even interesting manners of protesting the obscene amount of cash the Poetry Foundation received and spent on the slick new Apple Store—I mean, Poetry Center.
To me, the Poetry Foundation calling the cops and pressing charges makes me leery of visiting the place. I was supposed to go to the Zurita reading, and I'm thinking of going to another next week, though now I am not sure I want to (what if I accidentally disrupt the reading Will I get manhandled by goons?). It’s not that I totally sympathize with the protesters, but I do think their actions were harmless enough to be ignored. Pressing charges seems a bit draconian. Let it go, Poetry Foundation, while you still have a shred of credibility.
