My heart aches for Valerie Macon, and I have never laid eyes on the woman.

Macon is the state worker plucked from obscurity by Governor Pat McCrory earlier this month and named North Carolina’s eighth Poet Laureate. Her credentials are two volumes of self-published poems. In addition, her website, which has since disappeared, claimed she had been named a Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet, when she had actually been part of a program to be mentored by such a poet.  

The Governor confirmed that he and his staff had not followed the customary procedure consulting with the North Carolina Arts Council before naming someone to the post. The work of Poet Laureate involves conducting poetry workshops and readings and comes with a stipend in the $5,000 to $15,000 range. Macon’s predecessors in the post have all been award-winning writers whose works were published by other people. A number of them have taught at the university level.

  

A dignified cultural firestorm but a firestorm nonetheless erupted following the appointment. Veteran North Carolina writers contend that while Macon has talent and is addressing important issues like homelessness, she is a novice poet and not ready for such a position or such an honor. Within a week, Macon resigned. No word on whether she is back on the job as a disability determination specialist at the Department of Health and Human Services.

 

McCrory, apparently not realizing he was already in a hole, kept on digging, with this statement. “We’ve got to open up opportunities for people that aren’t always part of the standard or even elite groups that have been in place for a long time.”

Well!

A timely and reasonable answer to that came from Richard Krawiec, a Durham poet, who said, “Laureate is for people with national and statewide reputations. If you don’t honor that basic criteria of literary excellence and laureates being poets at the top of their game, what’s the purpose of the laureate position?”

Krawiec is right.

Oscars do not go to actors who appear on screen for ten seconds and utter one sentence. Pulitzer Prizes do not go to newspapers which simply publish wire service stories or to self-published novelists. The Heisman Trophy does not go to a third-string benchwarmer, however charming and appealing he may be.  Such folks may win awards later and I hope they do, but in the meantime, they can develop their crafts just as others move up the ladders in business, all sorts of professions, and every other field of endeavor.

 

North Carolina’s Poet Laureate fiasco does not rise to the level of world peace, of course, but it has stirred up some strong opinions, especially among would-be poets. The News and Observer in Raleigh asked readers to pen their own poems regarding the brouhaha, and here are three that amused me.

 

Loyd Dillon of Charlotte and Kevin Stroud of Raleigh tried their hands at these limericks, respectively.

“McCrory to poets: ‘Take that!’”

(A name he just pulled from his hat).

“Ha! I’m not well-versed?

You snobs are the worst!”

Real poets cannot stand Pat.

Then this.

There once was a governor named Pat.

Who put on his own stupid hat

When appointing a poet

He didn’t quite know it

The state has a system for that.

Janie Prete of Clayton wrote an ode.

Oh, the elite they do froth in a way that I love,

since Ms. Macon has risen to a perch far above.

It all seems so dire her rise to the top,

sidestepping the privileged. Who know she’ll stop.

And the Guv who we love, is he in a stew!!!

We all are befuddled, but really what’s new?

So North Carolina is without a Poet Laureate at the moment, which is unfortunate, but the vacancy is hardly our state’s most pressing problem. I suspect Governor McCrory will get around to filling the job, and he will likely do so this time with the counsel of the state’s arts and cultural communities.

 

As for Valerie Macon, she has had a rough several weeks, but she will survive and be the stronger for it. Even as voices rose saying she is not qualified to be Poet Laureate, there were also voices saying she is indeed a talented and promising poet. I hope she will write more and perhaps even attend a workshop or a reading by North Carolina’s next Poet Laureate.

Who knows? 

Maybe years from now a future Governor will appoint her and that by then she will be seasoned and ready to take on the mantle of Poet Laureate.