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07-20-2014, 04:40 PM
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Imagine there had been a peer review panel for NEA Chairman in the past. Would Dana Gioia have ever gotten through? Nope--and it would be based on the internal clubbiness of the people who get themselves onto those panels, not the merits.
Elected officials are not bound--and should not be bound--by unelected advisors when they make appointments. As with all appointments, they should get the very best people they can, but from my perspective there is no reason to reject someone simply because she is not the blessed candidate of an elitist guild. Whether the governor vetted this appointee properly is a different question, but it doesn't help poetry for poets to acquiesce to the predictable recommendations of the usual institutional suspects.
Most of us here are not MFA academics, and that would disqualify all of us most of the time in the eyes of the people who control these processes, and I don't think that's right. It's not just for the laureateships either--it's for fellowships, conference faculty positions and the like too.
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07-20-2014, 04:57 PM
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Join Date: May 2008
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Michael Juster
Elected officials are not bound--and should not be bound--by unelected advisors when they make appointments. As with all appointments, they should get the very best people they can, but from my perspective there is no reason to reject someone simply because she is not the blessed candidate of an elitist guild. Whether the governor vetted this appointee properly is a different question, but it doesn't help poetry for poets to acquiesce to the predictable recommendations of the usual institutional suspects.
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I don't know, Michael. I want to agree with you, and do at least agree with the spirit of what you are saying, but I just can't divorce this idea from the reality. If Macon was chosen by the governor because he often sat down with a book of her poems and found they spoke to him in some way, I suspect there would be a lot less furor over her appointment. If he was a real champion of poetry in general, and Macon and her poetry specifically, then he could have put the controversy to bed with a ringing endorsement and a justification of his decision ("her words have long resonated with me, and I firmly believe that she will be an excellent spokesperson for poetry in North Carolina"). But from what I've read about the situation, it seems as though the appointment meant so little to him that Macon might as well as have been a name picked out of a hat.
And that's where "credentials" come in, isn't it? If a politician knows next to nothing about a particular office -- big or small -- isn't it incumbent upon him to defer to the credentials of the candidates? I recognize that the arts are a bit touchier in that regard, and I'm certainly no apologist for the literary establishment (I'm in my mid-30s and am only now preparing for doctoral study in poetry), but when the chips are down, I'd rather trust the judgment of an "elitist guild" in academia than that of a clueless politician with a professed disdain for arts funding.
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07-20-2014, 05:44 PM
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I don't disagree with most of that. Ms. Macon could have been a mistake--that happens all the time with appointments at every level. I can't read the governor's mind, but he might have had opinions on poetry--a lot of non-poets do. We should at least be open to the idea that he wanted a symbol--a populist poet, a long-term public servant who committed to poetry in her limited spare time, and someone who had found creative ways to bring poetry out of the academy and into areas like improving the lot of the homeless.
We will never know, and it isn't worth guessing.
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07-21-2014, 12:18 PM
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Location: Natchitoches, LA, USA
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The NC governor won in that he succeeded in framing the controversy in terms of "cultural elitism" vs. populism, when in fact, the state poet laureate position is a populist position and the selection committees were put in place about a decade ago to make merit and not a political favor the basis for selection. If there is any bias at all on the part of the selection committees, it is toward accessibility of the laureate's work in relation to a general public audience. I have named some of the recent state laureates (chosen by those evil selection committees): me, Marilyn Nelson, Marilyn Taylor, David Mason, Kelly Cherry, Dick Allen, Natasha Trethewey. Can anyone please name one of those elitist MFA state laureates he or she is railing against? I am inserting a link to a recent national conference of state PLs that I attended while I was a PL. Please look at the titles of the panel discussions we sponsored: Poetry and Community, Poetry and Education, Poetry and Social Justice, Poetry and Politics. Is this the stuff of cultural elitism??? (And, incidentally, Dana Gioia was the keynote speaker at the first national conference of state poets laureate, in 2003.)
https://www.z2systems.com/np/clients...ews.jsp?news=5
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07-21-2014, 02:46 PM
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Join Date: Feb 2007
Location: Northern New Jersey
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Ugh. I wasn't going to get involved. And then I did. And I'm not.
RM
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07-21-2014, 10:26 PM
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Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Brooklyn, NY USA
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Maybe this thread has spun down enough to go to sleep.
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08-06-2014, 09:15 AM
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Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Natchitoches, LA, USA
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Here is an excellent piece by a former state poet laureate that reflects what a laureate actually does: "What Does a State Poet Laureate Do and Why Does It Matter?"
http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/wha...nt?oid=4220856
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08-06-2014, 03:39 PM
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Pretty good poem.
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08-08-2014, 07:17 AM
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I think Bathani's insistence on teaching experience as a necessary qualification just proves my earlier point.
It's not that I think academic poets should be disqualified--there are many fine poet laureates from the academy--it's that I don't think academic poets should disqualify everyone else.
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