Okay I am going to get all feminist on you, so if you can’t handle it as CD says, get out of the room and don’t send me letters. I love it when he does that. Anyway I’ve been thinking about Emily’s poet Laureate statement, along with Carolyn Forché’ never being named poet Laureate of the United States, I believe Lucille Clifton hasn’t either.
If you think about the fact that she IS THE ONLY POET IN HISTORY to have written two books in the same year to be nominated for a Pulitzer that is a pretty astounding fact. What does a girl need to do?
I know a poet laureate fairly well, enough so that if he called me up for dinner I would go and though I like him, I would say he is more then an entertainer than anything else. Not that he is a bad poet but there are certain people who consider poetry their religion and other ppl. who consider it their job and there begins a whole other debate but that's not what I want to talk about today.
In my ideal world which I live in quite a bit, I find it incredibly wrong that people like Clifton may die without ever receiving Poet Pope. Hell with character, it would bother the beejus out of me if I had done the things both her and Carolyn have done and been left out of the loop.
So the question for today is WHY? Do you think it is because they are women? Political poets? Or because they just don’t go after it and play the game?
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4 comments:
Without meaning to steer clear of any gender issues, I think Emily's got it right on. Clifton is really everything I would look for in a Laureate - a compelling writer with a sense of history, a gift for explanation, etc. - I don't know if the misleading simplicity of her poems plays against her, or if a poem like "Why Some People Be Mad at Me Sometimes" (and the story behind it) explains it all.
Emily and David,
I would say Maya Angelo theatre experience has served her well and the woman knows how to market herself. What I found interesting in the article Emily posted is what they said about poets using politics in their poems “rather” than art. Well how the hell do you do that? One of the things that I love about Clifton is that, it is so ART…simple yes, the way sometimes Picasso is simple, underneath there are countless layers.
I think there is a huge difference in the poetry world from being “a poets poet” and the “a peoples poet” Personally I think what bother a lot of people about Carolyn is that she won Yale and then went to work on social issues instead of writing her next book. She didn’t play the game. Look at the difference between her and Gluck.
I am not trying to dish anyone here but I am always curious when they dub another white male king of the hill, they have come off with some angle for the people. Look at Ted, he is a good old Nebraska boy and again, I am not saying there is anything wrong with that but with all the diversity in the poetry world, why do most of the poet laureates look alike?
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