Hand-Picked NC Poet Laureate Calls it Quits

The governor of North Carolina learned the hard way this week about the dangers of mixing politics and poetry.
Less than a week into her role as North Carolina’s poet laureate, Valerie Macon, a self-published poet and state employee, resigned over questions about her literary credentials and qualifications.

An uproar ensued after Gov. Pat McCrory announced Ms. Macon’s appointment last week. Several of the state’s previous poet laureates denounced his choice as a political appointment rather than one that rewarded literary merit.

They criticized Ms. Macon as a novice who hadn’t earned the distinction of the post, and faulted the governor for choosing the poet laureate himself rather than allowing a committee of writers appointed by the state’s arts council to make the selection.

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Last week, Valerie Macon became the poet laureate of North Carolina. Valerie Macon is a disability claims processor with no major publications who was picked singlehandedly by the governor. And you still can't get the slush-pile intern at Copper Canyon Press to answer your goddamn emails.

(Update: A sample poem of Macon's, "Vegetarian Meat Lover," has been added at the bottom of the post. Do enjoy.)

Macon, a lyrical dabbler whose appointment embarrassed Republican Gov. Pat McCrory and outraged published poets everywhere, stepped down from the state-funded post today, but not before she and the governor took shots at those nasty elitist writers and professors with their "literary standards" and financially debilitating lifelong commitments to underfunded arts programs.

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Kathryn Stripling Byer, who served as poet laureate from 2005 to 2009, took issue with McCrory’s attack on the state’s poetry community.

“I was surprised Valerie had to resign, but I can’t say I blame her,” Byer said. “I just wish she’d withdrawn her name before it got so contentious and vitriolic. I’m sorry McCrory put her through this. I hope people place the blame where it belongs, not on the literary community but on a governor who took matters into his own hands and chose a good person who just was not yet ready for this post. It’s sad.”

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Magdalen said:

I liked her poem.

OFFS!! Just when I was willing to let a pol bend the rules this has to happen. If the default process is "by committee" I'm sure it sucks and the idea of a grass-roots poet sounds like a good idea to me. Maybe I'm misreadin' this whole story??!

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cornflake said:

It's not elitism any more than it was elitism to criticize Bush's nomination of that woman to the Supreme Court, who was like, his personal lawyer with no experience or writings or anything on the level of what a Justice should be (though there are no qualifications listed). Same idea, imo.

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To the former laureates and other detractors, Gov. Pat McCrory’s choice of Ms. Macon — a state disability examiner with two self-published books to her credit — was an outrageous end run around the selection process, if not a cynical prelude to abolishing the position altogether. To the governor, who chose Ms. Macon without the usual advice from the North Carolina Arts Council, critics of his choice were elitists full of “hostility and condescension.”

For the broader world of people who read poetry — and many who don’t — the brouhaha was a chance to ask a more basic question: Just who are America’s state poets laureate, and what do they do anyway?

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The craze isn’t just happening at the state level. Boston and Los Angeles, among other cities, have established posts in recent years, while a Google search for “county poet laureate” yields thousands of hits.

“I’ve been to places where there is a poet laureate for every ZIP code,” Billy Collins, a former United States and New York State laureate, said. “The country is crawling with them. I think it’s out of control.”

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