Dearth of Nominees Defies Rhyme or Reason

It is a rankling challenge to state pride.

Surely California has no less literary talent or affection for the written word than Arkansas, Wyoming or the other 19 states that have official bards.

Yet with the deadline looming Tuesday, just 10 nominations have come in for the now formal post of California poet laureate, about one-third the number expected.

Program organizers blame the muted response mostly on a time crunch in publicizing the job, which came into being on Jan. 1.

Even they wonder, however, if leading California poets have concluded that the laureate title will bring more headaches than rewards. The post has already been fried on talk radio and newspaper editorial pages (in verse, naturally) as frivolous and irrelevant.

“There’s been a circus atmosphere around this thing,” said Paul Minicucci, assistant director of the California Arts Council, which is overseeing the poet laureate program. “If I were a world-class poet, I’m thinking I don’t need the validation from this and I don’t want to be the butt of jokes. There’s adversity written all over this thing.”

California has had chief poets--and chief-poet controversies--since 1915, but before last year never specified their qualifications, duties or term limits.

Political cronyism often outweighed literary merit in their designation. In 1966, the Legislature named former Assemblyman Charles B. “Gus” Garrigus--then unpublished and best known for commemorating each legislative session in verse--poet laureate for life, enraging the poetry establishment.

Garrigus died in 2000, opening the door for a new kind of poet laureate, codified in a bill passed last September.

California poet laureates must have lived in the state for at least 10 years and achieved prominence through a published body of work. Nominations must come from college literature departments, poetry societies or other experts.

In return for a small stipend and money for expenses, laureates must give at least six public readings and take on a project, perhaps coordinating with the U.S. poet laureate. They may serve no more than two two-year terms.

Even with the elaborate new rules, finding a poet who can speak for and to 34 million Californians remains a delicate proposition.

The state’s literary structure mirrors its sprawling geography: Multiple regional centers have flourished, but no single spot holds clear sway. The Northern California poetry klatch has little to do with its southern counterpart and vice versa.

“They’re probably going to feel they have to please everyone,” said Suzanne Lummis, a poet and director of the Los Angeles Poetry Festival.

Several noteworthy poets have begged off in deference to the handful of universally acknowledged California poets, including Pulitzer Prize-winners Gary Snyder and Philip Levine and former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Hass, Minicucci said.

“Many have said they wouldn’t want to be the first one,” he said. “They’re very modest and tend not to want to be out front.”

But Snyder, for one, has declined to be nominated, for similarly self-effacing reasons. Anointed last spring with the state’s Gold Medal for the Arts, he said, “I thought it would be unseemly to go looking for more honors from the state of California.”

Modesty aside, he said some poets are loath to accept a state office, fearful that lawmakers would try to influence or censor their writing.

“Any sort of official position is a disaster for the creative person,” said Lawrence Ferlinghetti, though he was the first to hold the poet laureate job in independent-minded, contrarian San Francisco.

Ferlinghetti, too, is uninterested in the state post. At 82, he said he prefers to concentrate on his own work and to leave the bully pulpit to younger poets.

Practical and logistical concerns also may keep poets from clamoring for the laureate title. Its still-unspecified stipend may not be enough to persuade established writers to forgo other work or to sustain lesser-known figures.

Some in the poetry community call the nomination process too paperwork-intensive and bureaucratic.

“When I read the application requirements, I just went ‘Oh, that’s too bad,’” said Joyce Jenkins, a member of the nomination review committee and editor in chief of Poetry Flash, a Berkeley-based bimonthly. “Top poets don’t have 8-by-10, black-and-white photos of themselves. The psychology of it is all wrong.”

Despite all the wrinkles and pitfalls, Minicucci says the poet-in-chief nominees include at least one “really major” poet and several others who have held the laureate title elsewhere in California, perhaps in the four cities that have such posts.

Lummis said the quantity of nominees matters less than the quality--and the state’s commitment to literary endeavors. “Poetry does not need the state, but the state needs poetry,” she said.