American poets are becoming an unexpectedly vocal opponent of a war with Iraq. “On Wednesday, in the kind of coordinated grass-roots action unseen since the Vietnam era, poets and writers will stage more than 50 readings in bookstores, libraries, churches and meeting houses across the country, inspired by poet and Copper Canyon Press publisher Sam Hamill, who in an e-mail late last month asked 50 friends and colleagues to dedicate the day to ‘Poetry Against the War.’ How did one e-mail launch a nationwide protest movement that will stage events through the month and beyond?