21 August (but written 9 October) 2004. Our latest poet laureate, Ted Kooser, has just given a talk on his plans for his laureateship. Kooser, who writes the plainest sort of Iowa plaintext poems (effectively, for the most part), wants--according to the newspaper report I read--"to promote poetry that many more people can grasp, enjoy, share and make a part of their daily lives." Is there anything wrong with that? I think so. If he were a private person pushing his particular product, as I push my burstnorm poetry, I'd have no problem with his plans; I'd even commend him for them. But as Poet Laureate, he has clout, and he's only using it to repeat what scores of others, like Dana Gioia, are saying. So I'm annoyed.

Here's what I'd like a poet laureate to do: start a website that lists all the schools of American poetry. Get fans of each school to write about it. Perhaps color-code the icons that lead to the schools, one color being for easy-reading poetry, one for hard-to-read conventional poetry, one for language poetry, one for easy pluraesthetic poetry (and some visual poetry, for instance, is as accessible as any poetry), one for hard pluraesthetic poetry, and so on. The simple idea would be not to single out one kind of worthwhile poetry, but present the whole range, to perhaps surprise just one person who has never liked poetry into a kind he was never aware of and discovers he likes.

I'd want criticism at the website, too. Much too little is written about poetry at present, and of the little that is written about it, almost none of it gets anywhere near where anyone but a specialist would find it.

Once the website is up and running, the laureate should publicize it, maybe even bribe schools to force students to visit it once or twice. And some politicians should be forced to visit it, too--so they could spark interest in it with their diatribes against it.