National Poetry Month 50 State Tour: Wall of Shame

It's Tax Day.

If you pay taxes, and I know you do, demand your poetic rights!

If you live in a Wall of Shame state, wouldn't today be the *perfect* day to tell your governor you want a poet laureate of your very own?

Here it is...your poetic Wall of Shame. These are the 10 states who do not have a poet laureate. (Notice the bench in front of the Wall of Shame is empty. Vacant. No one is in the bench position. Kind of like these states and poetry.)

National Poetry Month 50 State Tour

Wall of Shame

1. Poo on Pennsylvania! You have great gifts in Gerald Stern and Sonia Sanchez, but no poet laureate. That's just plain lazy.

2. Naughty New Jersey your poetry community is thriving and you're home to the largest poetry festival in the country. So, you were burned by a bad poet laureate experience. Get over it.

3. Cankerous Connecticut, saying your poet laureate position is vacant makes it sound about as appealing as an airplane toilet.

4. Miserly Massachusetts lists its poet laureate as: Position does not exist. Like, "We can't be bothered."

5. Oh, no! Ohio, like Mass, just can't be bothered to have an official state poet.

6. Mad-brained Michigan has had one poet laureate in its history. Edgar Guest was the only worthy poet your state has ever produced? Seriously?

7. No way, Nevada. You haven't had a poet laureate since 2007. What gives?

8. Noisome New Mexico. I'm getting tired of these states with "Position does not exist." Actually, poet laureates do exist. In 40 other states. What's your problem?

9. Artless Arizona -- artless is a good word for a state that doesn't honor poetry through a poet laureate position.

10. Hapless Hawaii, just because you were the last state on board, I'm not forgiving you. Joy Harjo is a resident of your state. Give her a call, would ya?!

Thanks to Pete Levin's page for some of these great, Shakespeare inspired insults.

As long as I'm venting, I'd like to have a word with the Poetry Foundation and the Academy of American Poets.

You'd be shocked at how many state poets laureate are not represented on these important websites. I, for one, was flabbergasted

If a poet has been deemed worthy by an entire state, that person deserves a bio on your venerated site. Discuss amongst yourselves while we get back on the road. Our National Poetry Month 50 State Tour continues.

Poetry Month National Tour -- Delaware

Welcome to Delaware, first state (12/7/1787). It's the first stop on our 50 state tour of U.S. Poets Laureate -- all in honor of National Poetry Month.

For five days, Delaware was the Uni-State of America. (Pennsylvania joined up on 12/12.) It's home to beautiful beaches. But didn't anyone think choosing the Weakfish as state fish was kind of lame? (Other fun Delaware facts and symbols here.)

Congrats, Delaware -- you've had a poet laureate (on and off) since 1947! Let's visit current poet laureate JoAnn Balingit.You know I love ekphrastic poetry -- look how Balingit takes the form and function of this wooden dish and uses it as a jumping off point to explore parenthood.

Winged Vessel
—Biggs Museum of American Art

JoAnn Balingit

Shaped like a kidney, marbled and starry, this wooden bowl reminds me
of the dish a nurse once packed into my things. Unable to divine its truth or

how to use it with my baby, I stuffed its sweet lobes full of cotton balls.
Its confidence made me doubt myself, aware I was a guesser. But I hung onto

that clown-mouthed dish, for it ferried the people of Fisher Price
across four states one bathtub at a time, passively reinventing itself,

penny holder, hamster john, spinning its principal story: the night I had
contractions while I gazed up at the stars. Each primal wave fanned out

a billion years. “We are 4.6 billion-year-old carbon!” blares my son, so
certified as ancient. He loves to hear the astrophysicist say The SETI group

will not give up its search for rocky planets orbiting stars. Forty years they've
scanned the skies for intelligence, a fluke of circumstance star-forged

just as Julian is, tough chunk of carbon whose questions fling him
through the world. He meteors his body onto the couch, pinches blossoms

from my potted orange, my parallel Florida universe. He finger-grinds
their fragrance out. Wonders, "How do oranges come from tiny flowers?

Read the rest here, or listen to JoAnn Balingit reading the poem. 

Buckle your seat belts, Pennsylvania and my home state of NJ are up next.

Don't even talk to me about Jersey. Despite claiming William Carlos Williams and Walt Whitman, and Allen Ginsberg, the Garden State is on the poetry wall of shame with other poet-laureateless states. I'll tell you the whole story on the way there. It's a doozy. (Just promise me you won't tell any "what's your exit" or big hair jokes.)