Billy Collins' Successor as Poet Laureate Announced

[HowardM2]

Thank God--a real poet (http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2003-08-29-poet-laureate_x.htm).

[Tony Smith]

From The USA Today Piece: Gluck's poetry often deals with women's problems and can be dark and foreboding. Loss and isolation are common themes.

How true. One of her books, The Seven Ages, is the most depressing collection I've read this year. Brilliant in spots, but depressing.

Still, she's an excellent choice for the "honor." I just wonder if anyone cares anymore.

Tony

[Harry R]

A list of all of them -

Joseph Auslander, 1937-1941 (Auslander's appointment to the Poetry chair had no fixed term)
Allen Tate, 1943-1944
Robert Penn Warren, 1944-1945
Louise Bogan, 1945-1946
Karl Shapiro, 1946-1947
Robert Lowell, 1947-1948
Leonie Adams, 1948-1949
Elizabeth Bishop, 1949-1950
Conrad Aiken, 1950-1952 (First to serve two terms)
William Carlos Williams (Appointed in 1952 but did not serve)
Randall Jarrell, 1956-1958
Robert Frost, 1958-1959
Richard Eberhart, 1959-1961
Louis Untermeyer, 1961-1963
Howard Nemerov, 1963-1964
Reed Whittemore, 1964-1965
Stephen Spender, 1965-1966
James Dickey, 1966-1968
William Jay Smith, 1968-1970
William Stafford, 1970-1971
Josephine Jacobsen, 1971-1973
Daniel Hoffman, 1973-1974
Stanley Kunitz, 1974-1976
Robert Hayden, 1976-1978
William Meredith, 1978-1980
Maxine Kumin,1981-1982
Anthony Hecht, 1982-1984
Robert Fitzgerald, 1984-1985 (Appointed and served in a health-limited capacity, but did not come to the Library of Congress)
Reed Whittemore, 1984-1985 (Interim Consultant in Poetry)
Gwendolyn Brooks, 1985-1986
Robert Penn Warren, 1986-1987 (First to be designated Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry)
Richard Wilbur, 1987-1988
Howard Nemerov, 1988-1990
Mark Strand, 1990-1991
Joseph Brodsky, 1991-1992
Mona Van Duyn, 1992-1993
Rita Dove, 1993-1995
Robert Hass, 1995-1997
Robert Pinsky, 1997-2000 (First to serve three consecutive terms. Special Consultants in 1999-2000: Rita Dove, Louise Glück, and W.S. Merwin)
Stanley Kunitz, 2000-2001
Billy Collins

Our lot -

Ben Jonson, 1615, appointed by King James I
Sir William Davenant, 1637
John Dryden, 1670 -- Stripped of the laureateship on the accession of William & Mary because he was Catholic
Thomas Shadwell, 1688
Nahum Tate, 1692
Nicholas Rowe, 1715
Laurence Eusden, 1718
Colley Cibber, 1730
William Whitehead, 1757
Thomas Warton, 1783
Henry James Pye, 1790
Robert Southey, 1813
William Wordsworth, 1844
Alfred Tennyson, 1850
Alfred Austin, 1896
Robert Bridges, 1913
John Masefield, 1930
Cecil Day Lewis, 1968
John Betjeman, 1972
Ted Hughes, 1984
Andrew Motion, 1999

On balance, I'd say there was a reasonable real/fake poet ratio on both lists.

[Dunc]

We don't have poets laureate over here. But then, we probably don't need another poem called On the Re-election of the Conservative Coalition Government or The Governor-General Gets the Message and Quits but Keeps his Beaut Pension.

Did Ireland ever give Seamus the Great some kind of guernsey?

Regards / Dunc

[Lola Two]

Louise is also taking over the judging duties for the Yale Series of Younger poets this year, for which I am immensely grateful. Last year, Merwin chose Famous Americans by Loren Goodmen, which contained this mind-boggling gem:

YEAST

I am Yeast, a great poet

I live in Ireland

Some say I am the greatest

Poet ever

My poetry makes bread grow

All over Ireland and the world

In glens and valleys, bread rising

In huts, clover paths, and fire wood

There will always be critics

Who deny Yeast

But you can see

The effect of my poetry

Through the potato fields

And the swell of the Liffey.

The amber coins and foaming black ale

-Loren Goodmen

What wordplay.

Lola

[HowardM2]

Merwin's obviously been away from using punctuation himself for too, too long.

[Steven]

Not angst_queen_teen_poet?

Whose judging these competitions? Recount the ballot boxes, there must have been a mistake somewhere.

Steve

[earthshoes]

I don't like very much of Louise's work--too {cough-cough) flowery, but found the piece below to be palatable. I think she did a nice job of capturing the struggle to maintain faith in some Greater Plan when it seems as though we are, by design, doomed to fail.

I like many of her linebreaks, though I have some questions about the use of the colon after "you" in line eleven.

Vespers
--Louise Gluck

In your extended absence, you permit me
use of earth, anticipating
some return on investment. I must report
failure in my assignment, principally
regarding the tomato plants.
I think I should not be encouraged to grow
tomatoes. Or, if I am, you should withhold
the heavy rains, the cold nights that come
so often here, while other regions get
twelve weeks of summer. All this
belongs to you: on the other hand,
I planted the seeds, I watched the first shoots
like wings tearing the soil, and it was my heart
broken by the blight, the black spot so quickly
multiplying in the rows. I doubt
you have a heart, in our understanding of
that term. You who do not discriminate
between the dead and the living, who are, in consequence,
immune to foreshadowing, you may not know
how much terror we bear, the spotted leaf,
the red leaves of the maple falling
even in August, in early darkness: I am responsible
for these vines.


From "The Wild Iris" by Louise Gluck 1992

[burner]

H - thank you for the list.

By way of conversation, who are your top three real/fakes from each list?

[David Mascellani]

Originally posted by Dunc McReil
We don't have poets laureate over here. But then, we probably don't need another poem called On the Re-election of the Conservative Coalition Government or The Governor-General Gets the Message and Quits but Keeps his Beaut Pension.

Did Ireland ever give Seamus the Great some kind of guernsey?

Regards / Dunc

"It’s worth noting that when the search for a British poet laureate was on, there were whispers –no, shouts – that the next instalment should be either a woman, a minority representative, or a poet of the Commonwealth. Oh, there was Ireland as well. How about Seamus Heaney? No, Seamus told
them clearly – though politely – that he wasn’t available."
A Poet Laureate for Australia? God Forbid! (http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Square/1664/laureate.html)

"He paused, as if to catch his breath. "I'll be really glad when this is over. You can see why few people really want to become poet laureate."
US Poet Laureate Hass misses W. Marin By Marian Schinske (http://www.ptreyeslight.com/stories/apr17/hass.html)

GADFLIES OF THE STATE:The changing role of America’s state poet laureates by Tanya Angell Allen (http://www.n2hos.com/acm/poetlaureatereport.html)

What Is A Poet Laureate? (http://oh.essortment.com/whatisapoetl_rlwn.htm)

Raising America's Awareness of Poetry Since 1937 (http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/weekly/bllaureate.htm)

[Dunc]

Les Murray? Stone the flamin' crows! Les shares with Judith Wright the honour of being Most-Prolific-Least-Worth-Reading-Well-Known-Oz-Poet, though at least I can think of one or two poems by the late Judy that ain't too bad. Les Murray? Strewth. Regards / Dunc

[Rachel Lindley]

Hey, anything that steals the spotlight away from Billy "taking derivitive self-referential drivel to a whole new level" Collins is OK with me.

Rachel