We've got a rumble shaping up over two candidates for California Poet Laureate: Michael McClure and Merle Haggard. (Scroll down to third item.) McClure is the well-known beat poet, originally from Kansas. Haggard is the well-known country-western curmudgeon, originally from... well, you know.
Powerline has further word on the Haggard nomination campaign. For the sake of balance I tried to find a website for the guy backing McClure, but the best I could do was McClure's own home page.
Should present company wish to endorse these or other candidates, see the noiminating instructions on the official California Poet Laureate Program web page. No idea if you have to live in California to nominate. Fortunately or otherwise, the position is not elective.
Posted by Martha Bridegam at January 3, 2005 03:26 PMA long time ago, when I worked at a classical music store, Michael McClure came in. I did not know who he was, only that, whoever he was, he was absurdly full of himself. He asked about contemporaries of Haydn and seemed very impressed with himself for asking such a question, grinning and pulling his shades half down to look over them, posing at the counter with his head to one side, as if inviting me to recognize him. I thought he was a creep.
So...I guess it's Merle for me.
Posted by: Alan Hogue at January 3, 2005 08:13 PMFrom McClure's Sestina:
We are ghostly shades
and the shapes of black
bonfires that melt through consciousness.
Perceptions are candles
and we are babes
who imagine the thorns of roses.
Then, Haggard's Everybody's Had the Blues:
Everybody's had the blues sometimes and
Everybody knows the tune.
And everybody knows the way I'm feelin' cause
Everybody's had the blues.
A lonely, song someone is gone,
A story old as time.
Love, hate, or want and wait till misery fills your mind.
But everybody knows the way I'm feelin' cause
Everybody's had the blues.
I feel myself leaning towards Merle.
Posted by: Bobby Farouk at January 4, 2005 08:26 AMI would have said to McClure: Hey you were good in the Last Waltz, why didn't you try and get more extra work?
Posted by: ROBBIE at January 4, 2005 11:11 AMI don't think Gary Snyder has had a turn at the job yet.
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at January 4, 2005 02:26 PMHow about Smokey Robinson, whom Bob Dylan once called America's greatest living poet?
Posted by: Gene Zitver at January 4, 2005 04:16 PMI will never forgive my mother for making me listen to that "Tears of a Clown" song over and over as a child. I shudder just thinking of it.
Posted by: Alan Hogue at January 5, 2005 10:04 AMWot, Gene's not rooting for Merle?
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at January 5, 2005 11:00 AMAnother take on the California "race" and one on the state of state laureates.
Posted by: Bobby Farouk at January 5, 2005 11:49 AMWot, Gene's not rooting for Merle?
I'm still peeved that he didn't answer my question about his favorite beer.
Posted by: Gene Zitver at January 6, 2005 10:17 AM“It’s just kind of boom-time for poetry in this country," eh? Funny how you'd never know it.
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at January 6, 2005 02:47 PMAlso amusing was the apparent confusion on the part of Vermont's state poet on the difference between the right to free speech, and some right to have that speech approved and praised by the public.
Seriously, though -- does anyone here read modern poetry for fun? Be honest, now.
Speaking for myself, the closest I've gotten recently was Seamus Heany's excellent translation of Beowulf. Other than that, it's just been listening to it when I stumble into a poetry slam around town. Enjoyable, but not something I'd seek out.
Posted by: Ben Brumfield at January 6, 2005 05:39 PMSeriously, though -- does anyone here read modern poetry for fun? Be honest, now.
What are you counting as "modern"?
Posted by: Martha Bridegam at January 6, 2005 06:26 PMWell, I wouldn't count Kipling or Ogden Nash, the only I've read in the last seven years more recent than Milton.
Since 1990, say.
Posted by: Ben Brumfield at January 6, 2005 08:00 PM