Poets sound off.

• Author: Moore, Diane M.
• Position: Letters to the Editor - Letter to the editor

The August issue featured an article by Matthew Rothschild, "Poet Loses Laurel," which I read with increasing anger at the treatment of eighty-year-old poet Maxwell Corydon Wheat. In fact, I don't think I have felt such outrage in my seventy-two years to equal that which I experienced while reading the article, especially when I came upon the words of the county Republican leader Peter Schmitt, who said he wished the Democrats would "spend as much time worrying about the deficit as they spend on things like birds and poet laureates."

Schmitt has Bush and the Republicans to blame for the deficit, as the Iraq War bill is climbing into the trillions. And I'm outraged that Schmitt could make such an ignorant statement about our wonderful wildlife and the efficacy of poetry.

Please continue the great job of reporting you are doing.

Diane M. Moore

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