Reidblog [The Reid Report blog]

Protesting the war in Iraq, the poet Sharon Olds, winner of a National Book Critics Circle Award and professor of writing at New York University, has rebuffed an invitation from Laura Bush, the first lady, to attend the fifth National Book Festival on the National Mall in Washington on Saturday. Noting that the event, sponsored by the Library of Congress, includes a dinner at the library and a breakfast at the White House, Ms. Olds, in a letter on the Web site of The Nation, said she found the invitation appealing. "But I could not face the idea of breaking bread with you," she wrote in a letter to Mrs. Bush. "I knew that if I sat down to eat with you, it would feel to me as if I were condoning what I see to be the wild, highhanded actions of the Bush administration. . . . So many Americans who had felt pride in our country now feel anguish and shame, for the current regime of blood, wounds and fire. I thought of the clean linens at your table, the shining knives and the flames of the candles, and I could not stomach it."