Doug,
That was Elizabeth Alexander, whom one might have expected to be named PL after
Obama was elected. Instead, Kay Ryan got a second term, despite an invisible initial
year which had no significant impact I could detect. Though the final choice belongs to
James Billington, the Librarian of Congress and a Slavic studies scholar, I believe that
Kay Ryan was Dana Gioia's favorite for the position and that Laura Bush was persuaded
by him. Whether Republican tokenism without ruffling feathers can be detected . . .
Barry
On Tue, 29 Dec 2009 10:45:28 -0700, Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
>Was she the poet who read at the Inauguration? If so, I have to agree;
>that was banal stuff, to say the best of it. WHile that old preacher
>just sang....
>
>Doug
>On 28-Dec-09, at 10:39 PM, Barry Alpert wrote:
>
>> Thanks for providing the link to this unappealing piece of writing
>> by the current Poet
>> Laureate. I subjected myself to her first reading in Washington DC
>> and found it quite
>> unremarkable, despite Dana Gioia's attempt to make a case for her.
>> Had the Librarian of
>> Congress attended to the following sentence from "I Go To The AWP"
>> before choosing her
>> from 15 candidates selected by previous PLs and Gioia, I wonder if
>> he would have made the
>> same decision:
>>
>> "No, I think poets should take the lesson of the great aromatic
>> eucalyptus tree and poison
>> the soil beneath us."
>>
>> She hasn't brought in even one poet I'd recommend to anyone as
>> useful or interesting, and
>> in fact a few of her curatorial choices are mainstream AWP fodder.
>> I look forward to her
>> departure from this area. Carolyn Forche, Eileen Myles, or Anne
>> Waldman would have been
>> much better choices.
>>
>> Barry
>>
>>
>>
>
>Douglas Barbour
>[log in to unmask]
>
>http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
>
>Latest books:
>Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy)
>http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=664
>Wednesdays'
>http://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/2008/03/new-from-aboveground-press_10.html
>
>The artist has no right to waste
>
>the time of the listener.
>
> Eric Alfred Leslie Satie
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