It also occurred to me that my fellow poets might have opinions worth sharing and, by the miracle of e-mail, I got in touch with some estimable pals. I can say unequivocally that everyone seems to be operating on the assumption that the Bush administration is either hostile to poetry or simply clueless about it. Charles Simic, the Pulitzer-winning proponent of prose poems, said he found it "astonishing that anyone expected Bush to have a poet. I imagine he and most of his Cabinet have only the vaguest idea that there's such a thing as American poetry, and it has no interest for them. To be a poet or a lover of poetry is to be a traitor to the only thing they care for, money, power and the NRA." Claudia Rankine, a celebrated experimentalist who teaches at Barnard, wrote ominously, "We are the first of the many who will be made invisible by George W."

Both Billy Collins and Robert Hass wondered about another issue: Who would be willing to serve? "It's hard to think of an American poet who would be willing to read at the Inauguration," Hass wrote. "That says something fairly distinct about American culture." Hass, who succeeded Dove as poet laureate in 1995, contends that "for most writers, it's not so much their opposition to Bush's politics, or the fact of the Florida controversy, as the intellectual disgrace of the Supreme Court ruling, which bears on the issue of language, which is a writer's area of professional responsibility. Everybody understands that language is used in particular ways in partisan politics, and doesn't necessarily hold politicians responsible for it. Judicial language is another matter. The polis rests on it, which is why Dante, for example, put abusers of public language in the coldest pit of hell." Hass lifted the phrase "intellectual disgrace" from W.H. Auden's "In Memory of William Butler Yeats," a January poem (1939) that succeeds precisely as a public statement, a poem of its moment. "Intellectual disgrace stares from every human face," Auden wrote.

For Collins, whom the New York Times in a recent front-page story anointed "the most popular poet in America," the "notion of a poet endorsing an administration by his or her participation in an inaugural ceremony raises the larger issue of the poet's role in society. Should poets be the spokespeople for their culture, or should they remain outsiders, throwing stones over the walls, or ignoring the machinations of government as they spin their own aesthetic webs? Shelley called poets the 'unacknowledged legislators of the world,' the accent these days surely falling on 'unacknowledged.' The inclusion of a poet in this country's inaugural ceremony is relatively recent. Kennedy invited Frost, then 30-plus years passed before Clinton had Maya Angelou at his first and Miller Williams at his second. In America, two in a row qualifies as a tradition, so it is a shame to see it broken with George W. Bush. Then again, what poet would Bush have invited? And when you're finished thinking about that, who would have accepted?"

Suave, unflappable Bill Wadsworth, executive director of the Academy of American Poets, also opted for Shelley's "unacknowledged legislators," irresistible under these circumstances. "Illegitimate chief executives should not with unacknowledged legislators consort," Wadsworth said. "It's clearly a Democratic tradition (Kennedy, Clinton) to have poets bless the new president and, for that matter, most poets are Democrats. Why would Bush want to put himself in the humiliating position of inviting poets who might very publicly refuse? What if the poet were to use the occasion to recite a much-deserved satire or jeremiad on the decline of the presidency and the corruption of the electoral process?"

From Cincinnati-based James Cummins, a maestro of the sestina, come related questions: "What's the point of reading a poem to a bunch of Republicans, anyway? I mean, it's not like they're going to get it. And [Bush] probably thinks most poets are gay -- it's too risky to alienate Jerry Falwell. And -- heart-stopping moment -- what if a poet would express reverence for, or even delight in, our national park system or wilderness reserves? Bad for bidness, bud."

Tom Disch, who is capable of writing the sort of wittily satirical poem that would be a president-elect's nightmare, summed up what emerged as the consensus view. "While I certainly don't like Bush, I think his not having an inaugural poet is probably a form of good manners, since any poet who would have agreed to lend his lyre to the occasion would have been trashed by all his peers. So why ask someone to volunteer to become a pariah?"

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