The American Poet Laureate : : A History of U.S. Poetry and the State / / Amy Paeth.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Columbia University Press Complete eBook-Package 2023
• VerfasserIn: Paeth, Amy,
• Place / Publishing House: New York, NY : : Columbia University Press, , [2023]; ©2023
• Year of Publication: 2023
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource

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.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- I State Verse Scandals: The Bollingen Affair and Postwar Poets at the Library of Congress, 1945– 1956 -- II Inaugurating National Poetry: Robert Frost and Cold War Arts, 1956– 1965 -- III The Politics of Voice: The Poet- Critic, the Creative Writer, and the Poet Laureate, 1965– 1990 -- IV Civil Versus Civic Verse: National Projects of U.S. Poets Laureate, 1990– 2022 -- Epilogue “An Invisible Berlin Wall,” the U.S. Inaugural Poem, and the Future of State Verse -- APPENDIX I Occupants of the U.S. National Poetry Office -- APPENDIX II Fellows in American Letters at the Library of Congress -- APPENDIX III U.S. Inaugural Poets -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index