She gives too much credit to her. From my understanding, she was mainly protesting the decision to cut on the National Endowment of the Arts, and for various anti-gay legislation. The vote, ironically, was proposed by Newt Gingrich of all people, who is a Republican, and not the Clinton administration. As for the wars in Iraq, well, why don't we throw all of the country into that equation?Originally Posted by OrphanPip
The kids she teaches in her classes are educated in the universities and public schools funded by programs run by state administrations, and governing boards of directors. The country itself generates income and spends money in regard to the military machine, the same thing which pours tons of funding into the arts, as well as keeps private universities like the ones she taught at afloat with huge funding grants.
Clinton himself is the example of a marginalized person working through the power of American success to achieve the impossible, even more so than the more credited Obama seems to have been, and is not responsible for all the ails of the world. If you want to protest, you accept your award, and you tell the public, I accept it because I hope that my presence will make the administration change for the better, and because I think for change, like everybody knows, you need to work on all levels from within as well as from outside.
There is nothing wrong with accepting a reward by the government for artistic contribution, it is actually a great honor, and can be used for the betterment of these so called marginalized voices. The woman is overrated, and addicted to the sound of her own voice. She died, and nobody heard, good.
Besides which, this isn't the problem, she is dead now, the question is, whether or not such marginalization and melodrama warrant us appreciating her poetry. As it is, I feel there is very little inside her poetry to make one want to read it. There are far better examples of poets working within the same vein and generation.
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