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A POET NOT WELL VERSED By M.L. Verb Robert Penn Warren, recently named the first U.S. poet laureate in history, has the right view of the job. He says that if he'd "been required to compose an ode on the death of someone's kitten," he'd never have taken the job. Instead, the work for which he'll be paid $35,000 a year (more money than most poets earn in a lifetime from their poetry) will have more to do with consulting on poetry for the Library of Congress. Unlike England, which has had a poet laureate for centuries (well, not the same one, actually, but a series of them; they tend to die eventually, you see), the U.S. has never felt the need. One happy result of our national negligence in this area is that we now do not have an embarrassing collection of poems written on demand to commemorate some alleged national event. In short, although we may have lost some memorable verse forever, we are compensated by having spared ourselves a lot of bad poetry. For instance? Well, let's consider a few fragments of verse that might have been written if we'd had a poet laureate in the past who lacked Mr. Warren's wisdom and his determination to avoid writing about every little thing. A recent U.S. poet laureate, for example, might have laid this on us: ODE TO CLOTH COATS, CHECKERS, ET Al Poor Richard's life was an open book To prove that "I am not a crook." Or, dropping back a bit further: TO THE FATHER OF HIS COUNTRY He wished the nation only good Although his teeth were made of wood. Surely the poet laureate in the Civil War years would have been moved to pen (he or she being at the time without a word processor) epic accounts of battles and heroes. For instance: BROTHER AGAINST BROTHER One wore blue, one wore gray, While one at home favored chartreuse Or some such. After the 1948 presidential election the poet laureate no doubt would have taken note of the question the polltakers were asking of themselves, "What Dewey do?" Maybe, in part, like this: THE GREAT UPSET But Harry felt within his bones That polls should not be based on phones. After Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, our poet laureate might have offered something like: ONE SMALL STEP. . . As Neil set foot upon the moon The nation sensed the coming boon Of high-tech answers in the sky On which we could for sure rely, Answers swift and sure and fair, That will not fail us in the air. And what poet laureate could have ignored Reaganomics? TRICKLING DOWN FROM BAD TO VERSE He cut our taxes, he met our needs For missiles, guns and toilet seats; And when our needs were fully met We all but strangled on the debt. Robert Penn Warren is a marvelous, top-cabin, serious poet. But even the best poets are capable of cluttering up the page with tripe when working on deadline and writing about "the death of someone's kitten." So, in refusing to produce such trash, we can only hope Mr. Warren has set a precedent. Or at least a vice precedent. Call The Works BBS - 1600+ Textfiles! - [914]/238-8195 - 300/1200 - Always Open