Averse to War

Yet this poet, so good with words, is careful not to overstate his case.

"What I do is an act of faith. I put words out into the atmosphere. They become part of what we breathe. Hopefully that has some impact. But we shouldn't try to quantify the impact of a poem like it's a package of beans."

Remember the words of the veteran of the Spanish Civil War, that noble, if doomed, cause. "You don't fight the good fight just because you think you're going to win," Espada says. "You fight the good fight because it's the right thing to do, regardless of the outcome, which you can't predict anyhow. That's how I feel about the work that I do."

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At the registration table, the poets fill out cards labeled "Write a Haiku to the President."

About 250 people sign up for the conference, paying as much as $85 for the four days.

There are two dozen featured poets, and the rest are poets, too, or students or lovers of poetry. (The schedule for today and tomorrow is at http://www.splitthisrock.org.)

The festival had its origins in the poets revolt of February 2003, when Sam Hamill declined an invitation from Laura Bush for a poetry event at the White House, because of the looming war, and instead launched a campaign of antiwar poetry writing. Out of that, local poet Sarah Browning formed D.C. Poets Against the War, which has been holding smallish readings ever since.

Browning led the planning for Split This Rock, supported by Sol & Soul, the local grass-roots arts group, and the Institute for Policy Studies, the progressive think tank.

"Poetry is what we have as poets, so we use it," Browning says.

Now E. Ethelbert Miller, sometimes called the dean of D.C. poetry, is onstage.

Humble, serious, ascetic in black, yet with his customary twinkle not absent, Miller launches into a piece by Hughes: