Free Republic

<p>It was to have been a celebration of poetry at the White House, but it looks as if it won't happen any time soon.</p> <p>Late Wednesday, the office of Laura Bush announced the postponement of a Feb. 12 symposium on poets Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and Langston Hughes after Sam Hamill of Port Townsend, Wash., one of the invited poets, urged the others who had been invited to protest the looming war with Iraq at the event.</p>

<p>The White House has called off a poetry symposium to have been hosted by first lady Laura Bush after one poet sought to use the event to protest military action against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.</p> <p>The event, scheduled for Feb. 12, was to celebrate the works of Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes and Emily Dickinson. But one poet who declined the White House's invitation sent an e-mail to other invitees and poets asking them to "make February 12 a day of Poetry Against the War."</p>