Comments on: OCHO#22: DEAR AMERICA, DON’T BE MY VALENTINE http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2009/02/ocho22-dear-america-dont-be-my-valentine/ A blog from the Poetry Foundation where contemporary poets debate classic and contemporary poetry from America and around the world. Mon, 15 Mar 2010 15:14:04 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Glenn Ingersoll http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2009/02/ocho22-dear-america-dont-be-my-valentine/#comment-7257 Glenn Ingersoll Tue, 24 Feb 2009 00:41:59 +0000 http://pf/harriet/?p=1262#comment-7257 I didn't watch the Oscars. But I did watch the clips online of Dustin Lance Black (screenwriter of Milk) and Sean Penn (Milk impersonator) giving their acceptance speeches. It was heartening to me to hear Penn calling out the anti-gay, anti-marriage forces for their hate, denouncing them as shameful, because the vote against family for gay people is shameful and hateful, a bedrock disenfranchisement of home and love. These votes are acts of violence, are crimes, and need to be named crimes, need to be pointed out as violent, the people pushing for them as opponents of family and love, justice and equality. I appreciate Murphy's call for an engagement in poetry. My own poems have stayed in my notebooks because they are fearfully angry and bloody. I am not ready to see them in the world. I didn’t watch the Oscars. But I did watch the clips online of Dustin Lance Black (screenwriter of Milk) and Sean Penn (Milk impersonator) giving their acceptance speeches. It was heartening to me to hear Penn calling out the anti-gay, anti-marriage forces for their hate, denouncing them as shameful, because the vote against family for gay people is shameful and hateful, a bedrock disenfranchisement of home and love. These votes are acts of violence, are crimes, and need to be named crimes, need to be pointed out as violent, the people pushing for them as opponents of family and love, justice and equality.
I appreciate Murphy’s call for an engagement in poetry. My own poems have stayed in my notebooks because they are fearfully angry and bloody. I am not ready to see them in the world.

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