An American Poet

The New York Times has a report about the busy life of U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith, with a headline that asks: “What, you thought it was all iambic pentameter and chamomile tea?”

I cannot speak to their preferences in tea, but — iambic pentameter? I wonder when the United States last had a poet laureate who was known for writing in iambic pentameter. I think it must have been the late Richard Wilbur, back in the 80s, sandwiched between Robert Penn Warren and Howard Nemerov. Wilbur, who used both meter and rhyme, must now be understood as a reactionary:

I read how Quixote in his random ride
Came to a crossing once, and lest he lose
The purity of chance, would not decide

Whither to fare, but wished his horse to choose.
For glory lay wherever turned the fable.
His head was light with pride, his horse’s shoes

Were heavy, and he headed for the stable.

Lovely poet, though.

The institution of U.S. poet laureate is one of the most American things there is: For one thing, we call them poet-laureate consultants — consultants, as though they worked for McKinsey. The poet-laureate consultant advises the Library of Congress, and that’s a very American thing, too: We despise idleness and think of literary vocations as being idle — and our poets are going to have real jobs, damn them! These are our most famous poets and, of course, nobody knows who they are — which is the most American part of all of it.

Donald Hall, who died last summer, was appointed poet laureate in 2006. He seems to me more fitting for our current moment. He was a very American type, too, a “rustic” who went from Phillips Exeter to Harvard to Oxford to Stanford and then back to Harvard. He wrote some poems very loosely adapted from Horace:

But as for you, at your age

It’s time to sit and snore. Forget love songs,

Ibyas. Stop lusting over

The Swimsuit Issue while you drink Bud all day.

Tracy K. Smith does indeed sound busy. The Times reports:

Ms. Smith, 46, who is serving her second term as the United States poet laureate, has traveled the country as an evangelist for her medium, holding readings and workshops in small towns, schools and juvenile detention centers. She has published four volumes of poetry, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Life on Mars,” as well as a memoir. Ms. Smith has also written two opera librettos: for “A Marvelous Order,” about the city planner Robert Moses and the urban activist Jane Jacobs, and “Castor and Patience,” about a Southern family dispute over land rights, which was commissioned by the Cincinnati Opera and is set to open in 2020.

Sounds exhausting.

But chamomile tea and iambic pentameter? The conception of poetry as an effeminate, precious, fey pursuit may explain why our poets are neglected. Some of our poets are chamomile tea, and they make me sleepy. Some of them are black coffee. A few are whiskey and cigarettes.

“Consultants.” Okay.