Can you name your state’s poet laureate? If not, you have a lot of company.
Although 45 of the 50 states have an official position of state poet laureate (per Library of Congress) the programs vary widely from state to state. Some of the appointments are local and, to steal a line from Ezra Pound, “present no adjunct to the Muses’ diadem.” But the best of them do something important: They connect great poetry with the state their poets call home.
This is the first in our occasional series celebrating State Poets Laureate.
The first poet I’ve selected is James Merrill. James Merrill might smile to see us celebrate his honor as Connecticut Poet Laureate (1985-1995), having received over his long career every major prize and honor American poetry has to give. But we choose to start this series with Merrill because his decade of laureateship places him among the longest-serving state laureates, and because his connections to his home state are much more than a post office box. (Although Merrill died in 1995, his house in Stonington continues as a home for writers and scholars.)
I love Merrill’s poetry for its mastery and modesty: His mastery of form in poetry and how it evolved; and his personal modesty in the poems, which is another kind of mastery. Both are apparent in “Angel,’’ the first Merrill poem I ever read, in college in the 1960s. Wish he were with us now.