Word reaches us that Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper’s office is seeking nominations for a new poet laureate to replace Lalo Delgado, who was named the first Denver poet laureate posthumously in 2004. A selection committee has been established, chaired by Alexander Ooms, a former staffer for the National Endowment for the Arts. The deadline for nominations is Aug. 31.
The purpose of the office is “to increase the general awareness and appreciation of poetry.” Denver’s new poet laureate will have no specific duties and will receive a stipend of $2,000 with a term of two years renewable to eight.
Of course, Colorado already has a poet laureate. The office of state laureate was established in 1919 and was held for many years by Thomas Hornsby Ferril. The current state laureate is Fort Collins’ Mary Crow, who was appointed first by Gov. Roy Romer in 1996, then reappointed in 2000 by Gov. Bill Owens. Because there is no fixed term for the state poet laureate, Crow serves at the pleasure of the governor. Still, one wonders how many poets laureate a state the size of Colorado really needs.
For her part, Crow says, “I have no problem with Denver having a poet laureate, in part because I live in northern Colorado, but the time could come when both the state and city poets would be located in Denver, as when Ferril was the laureate.” That could be confusing, although one can imagine an inspired marriage of the two posts, something that makes too much sense to be likely to happen.
Crow has been very active both in giving readings statewide and in establishing a program to train graduate students to teach poetry in the schools. But she was forced to raise money from private foundations and Colorado State University to fund these activities because the state provided no budget. “In a way it’s a comment on what’s happened to the arts in Colorado,” Crow says. “There’s no budget for these things and very little awareness of what’s going on. I don’t even know if the state Council on the Arts is still functioning.”
The notion of an official municipal poet may seem inimical to the intensely private business of creating poems, but the whole idea has ancient roots. In Greece, the laurel tree was considered sacred to Apollo, patron of poets, and was often used to form a crown or wreath of honor for poets and heroes. It gives you an idea of how ancient this was if poets were considered heroes. Laureate letters were dispatches from the front to announce a victory.
In England, the poet laureate has been considered a member of the royal household and the official poet of the monarch since Ben Jonson was installed as the first in 1616. The laureate’s official duties then as now were few, however, limited generally to writing poems to recognize an official holiday or the Queen’s birthday.
Payment has always been minimal. In Jonson’s time it consisted of a butt (26 gallons) of canary wine, suggesting that if you kept the poet inebriated he wouldn’t care whether he was paid. This strikes me as an idea Denver could imitate, especially because we have a mayor who still owns an interest in a thriving brewpub. I can’t speak for Denver’s poets, but I would prefer a year’s supply of pilsner to the salary they’re offering.
Things in England were updated in the late 18th century, perhaps in response to complaints about the public drunkenness of poets laureate. A small salary was substituted for the wine as compensation for the poet’s labors.
In 1936, the Library of Congress created a chair in poetry, and in 1985 the government created the title of poet laureate. The duties of the U.S. poet laureate are to produce one major poetic work while in office and to appear at certain national ceremonies. Among those who have served in this country are Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Penn Warren, Richard Wilbur and Gwendolyn Brooks. The current poet laureate is Ted Kooser, a retired Nebraska insurance executive and man of letters.
Still, poetic excellence has not always been the pre-eminent characteristic of poets laureate, here or abroad. While there have been some distinguished poets in the office, there have also been rhymers in name only. Take Colley Cibber, please. It’s a mixed bag, and sometimes the official appointments are puzzling from an artistic standpoint. Still, without sounding jingoistic, it is pretty obvious that the U.S. has done better than England in its choices over the years.
Historically, the position of poet laureate has often been politically charged, as when John Dryden was fired during the Glorious Revolution for refusing the oath of allegiance to William of Orange. And poets laureate sometimes remain controversial today.
In California, Quincy Troupe, a longtime professor at San Diego State University, was forced out of office when it was revealed that he had falsified items on his résumé. And after Amiri Baraka of New Jersey read publicly a poem that was allegedly anti-Semitic, there were calls for his resignation because it appeared that even the governor lacked the power to fire him. When Baraka refused to resign, the New Jersey legislature simply abolished the post.
For the most part poets go about their business in virtual anonymity. At present, 37 states have poets laureate, along with cities like San Francisco, Birmingham, Ala.; Tacoma, Wash.; and Tigard, Ore. According to Crow, the state poets have periodic meetings, the first held in New Hampshire, the second in North Dakota. “There were a bunch of panels of things no one was that interested in. To tell the truth, it wasn’t that well-organized,” Crow says laconically. “As you might expect with a bunch of poets in charge.”
Which brings us back to Denver. Eric Hughes, deputy director of the mayor’s office of cultural affairs says he has “no idea how many poets may apply for the position. This is an opportunity to see what kind of response we’ll get.”
The selection committee consists of seven people drawn from the community whose names are being withheld for reasons that remain mysterious. Given the political nature of poetry in general and the strains between, for example, academic poets and those who characterize themselves as street poets, the committee could well make a controversial choice. In fact, it’s almost inevitable.
Ooms, the committee chair, says, “It’s very difficult to separate poetry from politics, and the panel may be criticized for that. But controversy’s not all bad. To me, the worst thing would be to give an award and have no one notice. In any case, we’ll do the best we can and, if necessary, build a better process for the next time around.”
It’s easy to wax satirical about the possibility that in some future time there could be more poets laureate in Colorado than readers of poetry. The fact is, poetry is an endangered species, and even those of us with a more prosaic bent can appreciate the importance of encouraging a broader audience. Of course, even poets have different views of what they do. Pablo Neruda wrote, for example, that “poetry is an act of peace,” while Robert Frost commented dourly, “Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.”
Whichever view you incline to, let’s all look forward to the appointment of a new poet laureate for Denver as a means of building enthusiasm for the art in our town and giving us something new to argue about as winter comes on.
David Milofsky is a Denver novelist and professor of English at Colorado State University in Fort Collins.
