By: Marianne Amoss


illustration by Okan Arabacioglu


So, what does a poet laureate do?

Back in 17th-century England, where the first poets laureate took up their quills, the job was to pen verses to commemorate royal occasions. So when Michael Glaser became Maryland’s official poet laureate in 2004, he was a bit anxious about producing such “occasional verse,” which remains a small, sometimes dreaded part of the gig. “Whatever magical and mystical experience that enables one to do one’s art does not often come when someone says, ‘Will you write a birthday poem for my mother, or the opening of the legislative session?’” Glaser says.

This month, Maryland names Glaser’s successor, its ninth poet laureate. The Free State has had a poet laureate since 1959; past office-holders are, in order of appearance, Maria B. Croker, Vincent Godfrey Burns, Lucille Clifton, Reed Whittemore, Linda Pastan, Roland Flint, and Michael Collier. Most states have had a poet on the payroll since an Oakland librarian and versifier named Ina Coolbrith was dubbed “Loved, Laurel-Crowned Poet of California” in 1915. There’s also a national poet laureate—California-based bard Kay Ryan got the job in July 2008—who serves a one-year term that roughly follows the academic schedule.

The modern state poet laureate is charged with being the official bearer of poetry in his or her territory. Each laureate can define the job’s particulars, but the main duty remains to share and advocate for poetry. The artistic tension between fulfilling the duties of a government appointment while satisfying one’s creative impulses and needs has at times flowered into public controversy, most notoriously in 2002, when Black Arts poet/activist Amiri Baraka—New Jersey’s poet laureate at the time—came under fire from the Anti-Defamation League for a piece he wrote in response to 9/11 called “Somebody Blew Up America” (sample line: “Who told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers / To stay home that day”). The governor of New Jersey tried to remove Baraka from the post, but found that the only legal option was to abolish the office altogether. (New Jersey still does not have a state laureate position.)

Should Baraka have watched his words while he was a poet laureate? It’s a “hairy question,” says Glaser, a professor emeritus at St. Mary’s College of Maryland and a twenty-year veteran of the Maryland State Arts Council’s Poet-in-the-Schools program. “I think part [of the role] of any artist is to provoke discussion,” he says, and Baraka certainly succeeded in raising the profile of the craft. “Amiri Baraka wrote a poem that mattered. When was the last time that someone wrote a poem that got that much attention?” But Glaser didn’t court such controversy during his own term. “There’s a certain obligation or responsibility not to compromise my integrity, but this is not a place for me to try to be asserting my politics,” he says.

Dana Gioia, outgoing chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and author of the 1992 book Can Poetry Matter?, concurs: Being a state poet laureate comes with “all kinds of political and official requirements” that must be observed. “One of the most notable things that’s happened to poets laureate over the past ten years has been that they now have job descriptions—they have a minimum number of events they have to visit or perform at,” he says. “I think this is appropriate. If you’re going to give someone a public salary, they should have public duties.” (Maryland’s poets laureate only receive reimbursements for travel expenses.)

Glaser says that during his tenure as poet laureate, he focused on sharing his love of poetry with the public. He and past laureates Pastan and Collier worked with the Maryland Humanities Council to provide copies of books or CDs by Maryland’s seven laureates to participating libraries as part of the “Poetry’s Here @ Your Public Library” program. He also gave public talks and readings, both of his work and that of others. (Among his favorite poets are Mary Oliver, Adrienne Rich, Mark Doty, and Naomi Shihab Nye, especially her poem “Wandering Around in an Albuquerque Airport Terminal,” which he calls “one of the most wonderful poems ever written in the English language.”) Glaser ‘s title was sometimes the only thing that prompted groups to invite him to speak—his impression was they didn’t know what the term meant exactly—but the response he received was “heartening,” he says. “I found a real hunger from people in retirement villages to kids in elementary schools for the kind of dialogue, the kind of reflection that the kind of poems I was reading opened up for them.”

And despite his anxiety about producing “occasional verse,” Glaser found that he usually enjoyed the process. He especially liked writing for the grand opening of the Music Center at Strathmore, a state-of-the-art concert hall and education center in Montgomery County. “The opportunity to try to capture the wonderful idealism of that place and wonderful technology and put it together in a poem to be read at opening ceremonies—I was very happy with what I came up with,” he says. (To read the poem, go to www.urbanitebaltimore.com.)

Baltimore-based novelist Alice McDermott heads the current selection committee, whose eight members include working writers, teachers, and ex-laureate Collier. She says the job of the poet laureate is to “move poetry out of the doldrums in people’s minds.” Nominees must have a substantial history of publishing books and/or individual poems, and be willing and able to travel throughout the state to spread the good word. Last month, McDermott and her fellow committee members made three recommendations to Governor Martin O’Malley and his wife, Katie, who are to choose the state’s new poet laureate sometime this month. In Maryland, poets laureate serve four-year terms that may be renewed at the governor’s discretion. McDermott says O’Malley likely wants to incorporate poetry into public celebrations as seamlessly as music—“reminding all of us that poetry can be as much a fabric of our celebrations as the expected brass bands and fireworks.”

The best candidates for the poet laureate position are those who possess both writing chops and the enthusiasm and energy to share poetry with many kinds of people in different places—those who can prove that poetry should and can be an essential part of the human experience. “I know I’m not the best poet writing in Maryland,” says Glaser, whose term ends with the announcement of the next poet laureate. “My first deep commitment for the last thirty-seven or forty years has been to my family and teaching. I’ve never really had time to see how good a poet I can be, and I look forward to discovering that.”

—Marianne K. Amoss is Urbanite’s managing editor.




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