The American Poet Laureate -

About the Book

The American Poet Laureate shows how the state has been the silent center of poetic production in the United States since World War II. It is the first history of the national poetry office, the U.S. poet laureate.

Book Synopsis

The American Poet Laureate shows how the state has been the silent center of poetic production in the United States since World War II. It is the first history of the national poetry office, the U.S. poet laureate, highlighting the careers of Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Frost, Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Pinsky, Tracy K. Smith, Juan Felipe Herrera, and Joy Harjo at the nation's Capitol. It is also a history of how these state poets participated in national arts programming during the Cold War.

Drawing on previously unexplored archival materials at the Library of Congress and materials at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, Amy Paeth describes the interactions of federal bodies, including the Central Intelligence Agency, the State Department, and the National Endowment for the Arts, with literary organizations and with private patrons, including "Prozac heiress" Ruth Lilly. The consolidation of public and private interests is crucial to the development of state verse culture, recognizable at the first National Poetry Festival in 1962, which followed Robert Frost's "Mission to Moscow," and which became dominant in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

The American Poet Laureate contributes to a growing body of institutional and sociological approaches to U.S. literary production in the postwar era and demonstrates how poetry has played a uniquely important, and largely underacknowledged, role in the cultural front of the Cold War.

Review Quotes

One of the best examples of the new institutionalism in literary studies.-- "American Literary History"

A magisterial history of the office of the US Poet Laureate.--Kurt Milberger "The Journal of American Cutlure"

Having spent over a decade in the Library of Congress archives, Paeth is well equipped to tell this history . . . [The American Poet Laureate] offer[s] up a fresh analysis of how the US government and private entities have shaped the field of poetry.--Christina Obolenskaya "Harvard Review"

Recommended.-- "Choice Reviews"

The American Poet Laureate is an important book, and one that should be pondered in creative writing programmes, by prize administrators and in the editorial offices of well-funded magazines.--A. E. Stallings "Times Literary Supplement"

The American Poet Laureate is a compelling tale of intrigue, clashing nationalist politics, and the forging of what Paeth chillingly calls "state verse culture." Starting with the amazing tale of Ezra Pound's Bollingen Prize quickly followed by a detailed account of Robert Frost's triumphalist inaugural poem, Paeth shows how the state's investment in poetry often masks the ideological construction of both poetry and America.--Charles Bernstein, author of Topsy-Turvy

Amy Paeth's book is a study of why poetry is, as T. S. Eliot claimed, so stubbornly national. Focusing on poet laureates, Cold Warriors, cultural diplomats, and inaugural poets, she historicizes and complicates this relationship. It's the best sort of literary scholarship: smart, surprising, and field-changing.--Juliana Spahr, author of Du Bois's Telegram: Literary Resistance and State Containment

The U.S. poet laureateship was established during eras of global hot and then cold wars. Thus it was bound to get caught up in every manner of issue and problem except, even, at times, the poetic! Can one poet's verse be aptly deemed official? Can a multi-regional, multi-cultural immigrant nation successfully and persuasively choose a single notion of verse to represent it? Does the poet's characteristic ambivalence toward power ever befit a nationalist honor? Amy Paeth tells the whole fascinating story for the first time here. This book is a triumph of convergent modes of literary and institutional history.--Al Filreis, University of Pennsylvania

This is a surprising, provocative, and convincing history of ongoing efforts by poetry's advocates to borrow authority from state agencies. Poets from Robert Frost to Joy Harjo make plans for readers, could-be readers--even politicians. Now this art has honorable, reasonable intentions. Problem solved?--Robert von Hallberg, author of Lyric Powers

Why The American Poet Laureate hasn't been written until now is perplexing, but Amy Paeth's enterprising report makes the wait worthwhile. Her diligent archival trawl is put to vivid and informative use throughout, and bringing the story up to the present combines historical perspective with news of the day. This is not just a book, it's a public service, deftly revealing how "craft" is always also statecraft.--Jed Rasula, author of The American Poetry Wax Museum: Reality Effects, 1940-1990

About the Author

Amy Paeth is a lecturer in critical writing at the University of Pennsylvania, teaching courses in literature, writing, and cultural studies.