The publication and consumption of poetry is plagued by innumerable obstacles: the indifference and even hostility of the average reader; the competition for limited attention by the many aspiring poets honing their craft in this most poetic of States; the difficulty of assigning and ranking the meaning, much less the value, of the poetic products of the region; and so on.
By taking advantage of the resources already devoted to the veneration of William Stafford’s work, and redoubling and carefully organizing our efforts, we can solve many of the problems that Oregon poetry faces in the millenium ahead. I believe that a fundamental step around which our efforts can be efficiently organized is simply this:
Let us declare William Stafford the Poet Laureate of Oregon in perpetuity.
Several examples of the kinds of initiatives that might thereby be undertaken, and their benefits, will suffice to demonstrate the compelling sensibleness of this notion.
- The organizational advantages of a permanent poet laureate should be immediately obvious. Gone will be the politics and behind-the-scenes jockeying for each new holder of the position, and no resources need be expended in the fractious and irrational process of judging candidates. Gone also the period of adjustment after each appointment, getting to know the new laureate; their strengths and weaknesses, their interests, their needs. Each year, each decade, the poetry readers of Oregon will know their Permanent Laureate and his works more intimately. Needless to say, many of the ongoing expenses typically associated with the maintenance of the position will also be conserved.
- The cumulative familiarity and appreciation for the Laureate’s works can be supported in many innovative ways. (And appreciation for poetry in general can only increase concomitantly.) The current observation of the Laureate’s birthday can be extended to other important anniversaries: death, publications and appointments, marriage and the births of children, and so on. It should be possible without difficulty to mark a day vital to poetry in every month of the year (if not every week). Not only will these increased observances bring more readers to the Laureate’s work, but in the tradition of the birthday celebrations, it will provide more opportunities for practicing poets to display their own efforts.
- Similarly, the distribution of literature can be streamlined, such that the meager resources available have the most concentrated effect, by devoting all publication of poetry in Oregon to the works of the Laureate. Not only will this permit a degree of exposure of the total output of a poet unprecedented in the annals of publishing — which alone will serve as an examplar, and bring overdue honor and notice to the State — but the availability of the Laureate’s letters, working papers, drafts, and ephemera can only reinforce the intimacy that readers will develop in their relationship to the Laureate.
- It will be objected that a perpetual laureate will deprive Oregon’s poetry readers of the experience of conviviality and sociableness of a living laureate. This sacrifice, however, can be recompensed by organized efforts to bring readers into more direct contact with the Laureate: through memorization and study, through ever more detailed scholarship and scrutiny, and especially through alternative forms of socializing. An annual (or quarterly) seance might be held, in which the Laureate’s thoughts and guidance, in addition to bringing his readers closer, could be used to keep the administration of the office up to date with the posthumous evolution of his work.
This cursory outline is but a casual consideration of the possibilities offered. Those who have committed themselves to the propagation of the proposed Laureate’s work will see myriad and better ways that their current well-intentioned but diffused efforts can be renewed and reimagined in order to establish an unchanging and ever-reliable institution.
Does anyone doubt that such a reorganization of our public devotion to poetry would result in a great boon, not only for existing readers and writers, but for all those citizens subject to literate society’s requirements and rewards?
If so, let them propose another approach to the problem: Let them bring forth something new.
Submitted with humble hopes,
Winslow Zorn
Note: Nominations for the next poet laureate of Oregon can be made here.
