‘Gus’ Garrigus; Oft-Embattled State Poet Laureate

How hard it is to lose this friend so dear;

With no farewells--too soon we were bereft.

How quickly he made friends

With Death, and left!

*

It was verses like that one, trotted out for departed fellow legislators, that earned Charles B. “Gus” Garrigus the dubious designation of California’s poet laureate for life. His colleagues bestowed the lofty title on him in 1966 when he left the Assembly after serving eight years and went home to Reedley in the Central Valley to continue teaching at the local junior college.

Garrigus the poetic politician earned his own rhymed farewell this week when he died of colon cancer at age 86.

The legislator and educator died Wednesday in Hinds Hospice in Fresno.

Only the fifth person to hold the unpaid state position since it was established in 1915, Garrigus was named amid controversy and withstood repeated legislative attempts to retire him to “poet laureate emeritus” status. Yet he doggedly wrote an annual poem and read it in the closing, or otherwise designated, session of the Legislature until his death.

His work, with at least 15 examples inscribed on various monuments around the state, explored such topics as California, its Legislature, man’s first walk on the moon (which earned him a letter he treasured from moon walker Neil Armstrong), and the historic governor’s residence when it was abandoned in Sacramento by then-Gov. Ronald Reagan.

The poem he intoned for the Legislature in 1997, for example, echoed one written 30 years earlier and ended with the lines:

When you think of California, think of Nature’s generous hand:

Mountains, deserts, beaches, redwoods, beautifying land;

Primeval parks of wilderness,

Nature’s archives of the past,

Preserving for the future the beauty

That should last.

Several other poets had applied for the laureate position 34 years ago, which had been vacant since the 1961 traffic death of Los Angeles writer Gordon W. Norris. The other hopefuls pointed out that Garrigus, for all his political pull, at that time had never even been published.

“He wouldn’t know an ode if it hit him in the face,” snapped one member of the California Federation of Chaparral Poets, which claimed to be the largest poetry organization in the world and had its own candidate.

But the Democratic Assemblyman worked Sacramento’s smoke-filled rooms, and his campaigning paid off. Garrigus thanked his fellow legislators for passing the resolution on his behalf by reciting:

The lark, the nightingale, the thrush,

Have nurtured poets with lyric mush,

But sweetest of all woodland notes,

Are in the words, “He’s got the votes.”

Over the years, Garrigus’ appointment remained controversial as the worlds of art and politics argued over the situation. The Times honored all views, publishing the poem Garrigus wrote after Armstrong’s 1969 moon feat in its entirety, then damning another Garrigus poem with faint praise in 1976 by editorializing, “And, for what it’s worth, we would like to venture an assessment: The sonnet is in iambic pentameter, contains the requisite 14 lines, and clearly ranks with the best of Garrigus’ previous work.”

In 1983, a blunter Times editorial championed the latest bill to make Garrigus poet laureate emeritus and pass his title on to a younger writer.

The jovial Garrigus, who took his poetry and his title very seriously, always knew the thinking of both fans and foes.

“Those poetry societies and poetry professors, as far as they were concerned, a bunch of politicians were simply making another politician into the high priest of California poetry,” he told The Times in 1984, almost two decades after his appointment. “To them it was blasphemy. . . . I think I’m kind of looked down on; that’s my only conclusion.”

And yet, Garrigus may have understood and carried out the job of poet laureate better than his critics thought.

The position, adopted nationally only in the past few years, originated in England where a poet laureate was appointed for life by the monarch. Considered the most respected poet of the land, the designee had a duty to write poems celebrating official occasions and national events, and even to inspire or amuse a careworn king or queen.

“I love to think of [Lord Alfred] Tennyson sitting there reading poetry while Queen Victoria sat a few feet away listening,” Garrigus, who taught English at Reedley Junior College for more than 25 years, said in 1997.

Garrigus enchanted fellow legislators when he arrived in Sacramento by writing a poem about his first session and reading it as they closed up shop.

“It was all about rivalry and stuff, personalities and stuff, incidents and attitudes and controversy,” he said. “The Legislature loved it. After that, I was expected to have a poem at the end of every session.”

The late Gov. Pat Brown enjoyed Garrigus’ work so much that he became a regular at the designated legislative session just to hear the poem.

Three years ago, after decades of controversy and urging that Garrigus step aside for a younger bard, he explained why he clung to the title: “I feel like it gives me a chance to do something for the cause of poetry. There’s no more influential use of language than poetry, if you do it right.”

In addition to his many poems, some collected in a book called “Quest,” Garrigus wrote two novels: “Brief Candle” and “Chas. & The Summer of ’26.”

Born and brought up by grandparents in Marion, Ill., Garrigus grew up dreaming of moving to California to become an actor. He earned a master’s degree in English at the University of Illinois, and eventually did make his way west--but as a teacher, first in high school and then the junior college.

Friends who knew him best said teaching became his first love. Indeed, his proudest accomplishment as a legislator was passing a 1960 bill requiring all high school districts to form junior college districts.

But his youthful yen for acting permeated his teaching. Garrigus simply became Falstaff or Henry IV or whatever character was needed to introduce his students to the joys of Shakespeare and other classic literature.

Any controversy long outlived, the widower with five children recently told hospice workers, before slipping into a coma: “I’ve had a wonderful life and I have been well-loved.”