All the Nation's Poet

By Paul Gray

For almost 210 years, the U.S. has muddled along without an official poet laureate. This lack did not noticeably hinder the work of such natives as Poe, Whitman, Dickinson, Eliot, Pound, Stevens, Frost and Robert Lowell. But it bothered Hawaiian Senator Spark Matsunaga, an avid reader and sometimes writer of poems, including one called Ode to a Traffic Light ("Impartial traffic cop/ That blushingly speeding cars do stop . . .").

From the moment Matsunaga entered Congress, as a member of the House in 1963, he began a lonely but determined campaign to create a national poetic license. Last year he finally succeeded. Librarian of Congress Daniel J. Boorstin agreed that each new consultant in poetry to the Library, a post that has existed for 50 years and carries a one- or two-year term, would also bear the title of poet laureate. Matsunaga was understandably elated: "The poet laureate of the U.S. will raise the prestige and respect of the poet to the point where youngsters will aspire to become poets, just as politically minded youngsters aspire to the presidency."

At least one poet was inclined to disagree. "When I was growing up, a title would not have affected me at all," says Robert Penn Warren, 80, who last week became the nation's first poet laureate. "I started writing because it was what I wanted to do. I didn't need encouragement." In fact, Warren (who was poetry consultant to the Library of Congress in 1944-45) suggested he would not have accepted the honorific if it had carried the same sort of trappings as in Britain, where in 1668 John Dryden became the first poet laureate. "The idea of an official poet goes against our system," says Warren. "We aren't English. Over there, the laureate becomes a member of the government. Over here, I will just be an employee of the Library of Congress."

Warren will be receiving a bit more than the annual stipend of (pounds)100 and a case of wine that goes to his English counterpart (currently Poet Ted Hughes). The U.S. job pays $36,000, and an additional $10,000 has been appropriated for a poetry conference at which the poet laureate may read, if he wants to. He will not hold the title for life, but only until his term as | consultant to the Library is over. And he will not be expected to produce occasional verse or commemorative odes at anyone's behest. "I would not think of doing such a thing," says Warren.

The poet laureateship may be a title in name only, but certainly no one is begrudging Warren's selection. He is a familiar name to the general public, probably best known for his novel All the King's Men (1946). He is the only person ever to win Pulitzer prizes for both poetry and fiction. His distinguished career seems to have made the introduction of a regal tradition into a democratic society easy for everyone involved. "I think he is such an obvious choice," says Librarian Boorstin, who made the appointment. "We were fortunate to have Robert Penn Warren with us, willing to take on this responsibility."

What may happen when Warren must relinquish the honor is already a vexing question. The prospect of regular spats over who will be the next laureate does not seem terribly poetic. Fairly soon the U.S. will have accumulated more laureates than the 18 that England has amassed in almost 300 years. In a calendar sent to friends and constituents, Matsunaga has written, "If the lessons of human experience were all written in verse, we might better learn and remember them." One metrical piece of advice: "Abandon what's foreign/ After Penn Warren."

With reporting by Melissa August/Washington