Anne Boyer, a poet and essayist who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2020, quit as poetry editor of The New York Times Magazine and released a resignation letter. She denounced “the Israeli state’s U.S.-backed war against the people of Gaza” — accurately calling it “an ongoing war against the people of Palestine, people who have resisted through decades of occupation, forced dislocation, deprivation, surveillance, siege, imprisonment, and torture.”
Boyer’s resignation is not only a protest against the continuous killing in Gaza. She also deftly described how the New York Times, like U.S. news media overall, can flatten mass murder into monotone narratives: “I can’t write about poetry amidst the ‘reasonable’ tones of those who aim to acclimatize us to this unreasonable suffering. No more ghoulish euphemisms. No more verbally sanitized hellscapes. No more warmongering lies.”
We republish the powerful resignation letter released by Anne Boyer with the hope that it inspires other writers to speak out against this unconscionable war.
my resignation
NOV 16, 2023
I have resigned as poetry editor of The New York Times Magazine.
The Israeli state’s U.S-backed war against the people of Gaza is not a war for anyone. There is no safety in it or from it, not for Israel, not for the United States or Europe, and especially not for the many Jewish people slandered by those who claim falsely to fight in their names. Its only profit is the deadly profit of oil interests and weapon manufacturers.
The world, the future, our hearts — everything grows smaller and harder from from this war. It is not only a war of missiles and land invasions. It is an ongoing war against the people of Palestine, people who have resisted through decades of occupation, forced dislocation, deprivation, surveillance, siege, imprisonment, and torture.
Because our status quo is self-expression, sometimes the most effective mode of protest for artists is to refuse.
I can’t write about poetry amidst the “reasonable” tones of those who aim to acclimatize us to this unreasonable suffering. No more ghoulish euphemisms. No more verbally sanitized hellscapes. No more warmongering lies.
If this resignation leaves a hole in the news the size of poetry, then that is the true shape of the present.
— Anne Boyer