Noted Elsewhere: Confessions of a Poet Laureate

By CHARLES SIMIC [The New York Review of Books] – I’d heard about the endless reading tours of previous laureates, the elaborate projects they had devised and administered to make poetry more popular in United States, and none of it appealed to me very much. There’s a good reason why I have lived in a small village in New Hampshire for the last thirty-seven years. I like to hear roosters crow in the morning and dogs bark at night. “No way,” I told my wife. I was going to call them back and politely decline. But to my surprise, speaking to my children, I changed my mind. My son and daughter told me, separately, that if I refused this great honor I would come to regret my decision some day. I knew right away that they were right. I thought some more about it, but I kept going back to what they said. So, I accepted. (Continued at The New York Review of Books | More Chronicle & Notices.)

This Fortnightly Review article is filed under the following rubrics: Chronicle & Notices.
Publication: Thursday, 29 April 2010, at 09:16.
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Noted Elsewhere: Confessions of a Poet Laureate

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