[Julie Steiner]

Richard Wilbur's endnote on this poem in his Collected Poems 1943-2004 may be of interest:

For the Student Strikers This was written one afternoon at the request of Wesleyan students, during a "strike" against U.S. military actions in Southeast Asia. The poem supports a student-proposed "canvassing" program, under which the students were to go from door to door in the city of Middletown, discussing their views with the citizens. As the poem did not flatter the students in the manner to which they were accustomed, it was at first thrown into the wastebasket at the offices of Strike News, but later retrieved and published.