California, home of 'beat' poets, seeks official bard

"These jobs come with almost no job description and little if any pay, so we start from scratch and decide what we want to do and how to do it," says Mr. Chandler. Besides numerous personal appearances around the state, he uses a monthly column in the Providence Journal-Bulletin to present Rhode Island poets to a statewide audience.

Utah state poet Ken Brewer, who has penned couplets for building dedications, is largely focused on building a video archive of state writers. He says he "would love to open a session of the state legislature," but hasn't been asked.

"[Brewer] talks about value of arts and what people can do as individuals to support them," says Guy Lebeda, of the Utah Arts Council. "For Utah, it has been a fabulous idea because we are still in the stage of beginning to recognize our own artistic heritage."

While some poets toil to capture recognition by preserving a region's identity, others arrive at their post already decorated. Vermont's laureate Grace Paley, for instance, has received awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Institute of Arts and Letters for her ability to capture the voice of an immigrant generation.

And not all poets are willing to work in obscurity. New Jersey poet laureate Amira Baraka rankled state legislators and antidefamation groups two years ago with a stanza toward the end of a poem entitled, "Somebody Blew Up America": "Who Knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed/Who told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers/To stay home that day/Why did Sharon stay away?"

California has set a Jan. 31 deadline to fill its post and hopes to find a bard of distinction and repute. Two years ago, the state passed a bill redefining the position after Charles Garrigus, at the time of his passing, had filled the post for nearly four unremarkable decades. Then the new laureate, Quincy Troupe, resigned after four months when a background check revealed he had lied on his résumé about graduating from college.

Appointing a state bard isn't as simple as it seems. San Francisco State's Dickison says the California position could be tricky if the holder used the post to to speak out about the current state administration's lack of real support for the arts. "And that can be risky," he says, in getting a nomination approved.

But Mr. Gottlieb of the CAC doesn't see an activist poet as a problem. It will be a wide open question, he and others say, whether that person will be such an advocate with formal pleas for more funding, or by just creating a higher profile for great writers. "Poets are unique individuals who can look at the ordinary and transform it into the extraordinary," says Gottlieb. "We want this to be a role model for many others who can be inspired, educated, and enlightened by the art of poetry."

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