US: The White House has concluded that the pen might indeed be mightier than the sword - or even worse, a source of embarrassment, writes Conor O'Clery
The First Lady, Mrs Laura Bush, has put off a symposium in the East Wing of the White House on the works of Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman and Langston Hughes, after some of the poets invited said they would use the occasion to recite anti-war poetry.
The reading, planned for February 12th, was part of a series of events to promote American literature. A spokeswoman for Mrs Bush said it would be appropriate "to turn a literary event into a political forum".
One of the poets invited, Sam Hamill, sent e-mails to friends asking for anti-war verse and statements of protest action against war in Iraq to be presented to the First Lady. He has since created a web-site poetsagainstthewar.org to handle the huge volume of responses.
One poem from Marilyn Hacker includes lines on men who "murder their neighbours with their righteous fervour/while claiming they're defending democracy".
There was embarrassment for President Bush too in the anti-war activism of a bishop in his church, the United Methodist Church.
In the advertisement which began running yesterday on CNN and Fox cable networks in Washington and New York, Bishop Melvin Talbert states that war against Iraq "violates God's law and the teaching of Jesus Christ".
The ad was placed by the "Win Without War" group and was intended to show that the peace movement was middle-of-the-road and patriotic, according to its national director Mr Tom Andrews.
Bishop Talbert told the Washington Post that he believed more Americans were openly opposed to war with Iraq than were two years into the Vietnam War in the 1960s.